There was a big, explicit effort to promote Jiu-Jitsu worldwide around the turn of the century. This is also why Teddy Roosevelt and various Brazilians got so interested in it, which led in Teddy Roosevelt's case to some funny correspondence and in the Brazilians' case to a century of beating the shit out of people, which eventually made it to TV as the UFC.
And there's the Sherlock Holmes connection too, of course.
Someday we'll find it, the Sherlock Connection. The Brazilians, Roosevelt, and me.
Victorian Society Ladies Defended Their Honors With Jiu-Jitsu
Academic defenses were apparently more lively back then.
There's a fairly big revival of that sort of stuff on at the moment in martial arts circles. Bartitsu, etc. There's an overlap with the thing I do, so I read some of the blogs and 'lists'. Sadly, while there's some interesting revival stuff happening, a lot of it is Mitty-ish.
Baristsu is the art of self-defense using steam.
11: as far as I can tell it basically is Jiu-Jitsu with topcoats and, presumably, goggles.
Would 'baristasu' have made my joke clearer?
To me, at least. But I'm notoriously slow.
"Bar-tits-u" is a great name for a strip club.
13: no it would make it less awesome than the steampunk dig I thought you were making.
17: To make that joke, I would have had to know what bartitsu was.
Bartitsu was a sort of early 20th century JKD/mixed-martial-art precursor. Bits of judo/jiu-jistu, bits of English boxing, some wrestling, some savate, and some cane and single-stick type stuff. It didn't last long, though, and the revival is definitely at least partly steampunk inspired.
It's the martial art Conan Doyle has Holmes use to defeat Moriarty.
15: Amused, now, but slow in general. "My god, the corpse has a picture of a sunset scalded onto his face!"
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No more hilarious, high-speed masturbating to Jonathan Winters.
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I actually thought it was simultaneously a joke about baristas and a dig at steampunk., which would have made it the greatest joke ever made. So many levels.
The Sherlock Connection: The Brazilians, Roosevelt, and me.
The next bestseller by Simon Winchester.
I should really learn to not explain myself. That never helps, even on "show your work" portions of tests.
For some reason I didn't get the song stuck in my head when I read 5, but now with 26 it's lodged there.
Aaaall of us kiiiicking yoouur aass so haaaard that it's proooobably maaaaaaaaaaaagic
The song got stuck in my head on reading 4.
It's all a matter of leverage and maybe a well-placed hat pin.
I heard you say "Jew"
Just because somebody wears a shirt saying, "I Support Every Single Policy of the National Socialist Party and the Views of Adolf Hitler" doesn't mean they are antisemitic.
Maybe I'm so "well-placed" because I worked hard and got to where I needed to be, ever think of that?
Edith Margaret Garrud is fascinating, especially around the Cat-and-Mouse act era. Minivet is right-ish in that she was mostly active in Edward's reign.
There was, however, a steady minority interest in sport and outdoor activity and practical clothing for Victorian women. It was neither as sexy and commercializable as the `professional beauties' or as political as the dress reformers, but may have been more normal than either at the time. I've seen mid-19c knitting and crochet patterns for unboned, canvas-less exercise corsets, which would probably have been as close as they could get to our Lycra exercise tops. One set was designed for fencing practice in girls' schools.
Seconding 25. I believe Neal Stephenson is big into bartitsu, for reasons that keep looking like confused contrapositive orientialism to me, although `I want to be Sherlock Holmes' would make all the sense one needs.
Neal Stephenson ... confused contrapositive orientialism but I repeat myself.
What is the contraposition of orientalism? "this isn't mysterious, so it's not from the east"?
That's straightforward contrapositive orientalism. The confused kind is Neal Stephenson.
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Just spent half an hour trying to debug a non-existent electrical problem caused by pushing the wrong button. It's Friday afternoon is my only excuse.
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I'm still confused by the confused contraposition at issue. It's Friday afternoon is, if not my only excuse, one excuse.
I'm overly curious about unboned, canvas-less exercise corsets. It's Friday afternoon isn't helping, but I hardly think it a necessary or sufficient cause.
I'm having a hard time picturing a handknit corset that would have exercise-bra-like support.
Try picturing Rachel Weisz wearing it. That might help.
There is a big element of that, yeah, with some Western martial arts enthusiasts. Particularly the historical/revival kind.
'We are taking martial arts back to the way they were when men were men and Europeans stood astride the globe; before they got corrupted by inscrutable men/charlatans in white pyjamas.'
Or, the milder anti-orientalist form:
'Much of the enthusiasm for karate/kung-fu/ju-jitsu, etc is based on a misguided orientalism. In fact, there were loads of comparable practices around in Europe, and it might be fun to look again at those.'
I have seen a lot of "European martial arts" talk online lately, not a little of it connected somewise to Neal Stephenson, focusing primarily on medieval and early-Renaissance swordfighting. In unrelated news, does anyone know where I can get a bulk discount on paperbacks of The Face of Battle? No reason.
I personally wish that carrying a cane would come back into fashion. I've always wanted a loaded cane. Using my grandma's old four-footed cane to fight seems to be not in the spirit of the thing.
Using my grandma's old four-footed cane to fight seems to be not in the spirit of the thing.
Replace the tennis balls with iron spikes and tell people it's a Quad-dent.
That's the walker. The cane has four feet, but it is a one-handed assist.
I personally wish that carrying a cane would come back into fashion.
I just got given this as a gift.
Is there actually a traditional western european martial art of hand to hand combat by fists comparable to karate or kung fu? I mean sure there was traditional european fencing/swordfighting/use of weapons, and I guess boxing probably has a lengthy pre-Marquess of Queensbury history, but I didn't think there was a traditional western european art of kicks and punch throwing and what not.
Also, my Dad, who now (largely unnecessarily) uses a cane, has a sword cane that someone gave to him. It's not really adequately sharpened for combat use, though.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Start by purchasing a good quality file and a stone.
Speaking of martial applications of various accoutrements, our various fellow commenters who have lately been blessed* with new offspring might consider adopting the way of Lone Wolf and Cub.
* Unlike most other words, most other times, not an ironic usage. All the kids whom I have seen on the ol' Grimoire des Visages recently are adorable and fantastic.
Using my grandma's old four-footed cane to fight seems to be not in the spirit of the thing.
There's a rich tradition in that weapon that goes back at least two summers.
54: I have the perhaps faulty (ttaM?) impression that traditions like Scandinavian/Swiss/Scots/West African/Turkish wrestling have had most of the punching/kicking/gouging refined out of their modern manifestations, but they had them at one time or another.
It needs four more years of tradition before it becomes a traditional combat style.
54: you might be overestimating the degree to which kung fu and karate actually represent stable historical traditions that date back more than a couple of hundred years or so. The early writing about Shaolin wushu is mostly talking about something weapons-based, for instance, and a lot of the other early stuff is basically wrestling (as is Jiu-Jitsu). Which makes sense, as punching and kicking people actually isn't a very good way to win a fight in a world where wrestling and swords exist.
[P]unching and kicking people actually isn't a very good way to win a fight in a world where wrestling and swords exist.
...
63 -- yeah that's probably right.
Wrestling and swords aren't a very good way to win a fight in a world where guns exist.
Also, per Flippanter, you might be overestimating the degree to which European fighting styles (fencing, wrestling) did include striking when they were taught as actual combat arts.
Dammit, 67 should have been "underestimating".
And actually, wikipedia-ing, it looks like boxing and Shaolin martial arts both first emerged (or, at least, were first documented) in the mid-17th century or so.
Shouldn't someone have linked to something by the Wu Tang Clan by now?
Grappling and wrestling in medieval fencing, at really tremendous length.
The Marines now have all troops do close combat training which includes bashing with anything handy, like a 2 x 4 or web belt.
27 I should really learn to not explain myself.
I, also, thought you were making a steampunk joke. Also, I'm way behind on reading the thread.
Since boxing is a manly game, And Britain's recreation, By boxing we will raise our fame 'Bove every other nation.
Found in a Farnol novel, I think; he has several on boxing.
If I have the (probably Dover) reprint of the ladies' journals with the exercise corsets, it's way deep in storage, sorry. I found the patterns convincing enough -- especially the crochet one -- they were complexly shaped, and they specified very fine very tough wool, not fluffy stretchy stuff. Might have been double-knit in parts.
The wing chun weapons are mostly farm implements, which seems very practical and historically logical, insofar as one can describe the traditions of wing chun as history.
K. J. Parker has a couple of wonderfully pessimistic novels built around fencing.
Oh, the article in 71 is great an invites much further time-wasting. It doesn't seem to mention whether rediscovered classicism made wrestling more fashionable. Lots of lovely bums in the engravings, though. ...I don't think I need to explain myself there.
What on earth would you use butterfly swords for on a farm? "Okay, honey, while you're off at the market I'll be back here flaying two goats at once!"
early writing about Shaolin wushu is mostly talking about something weapons-based
Shouldn't someone have linked to something by the Wu Tang Clan by now?
No, this instead! (Weapons!)
I've been trying to come up with a dawn-of-modern-capitalism/illiquid-swords joke for twenty minutes now.
There's a discussion in Albion's Seed about rough and tumble, the original redneck martial art. I'd look it up and excerpt, but, well, I've got some higher quality procrastination to attend to.
There was also some pastime (from the South, 19C or before) where two people hold each other by the arms and kick each other's shins until one of them falls down.
Actually, maybe that was from Albion's Seed.
1. Wasn't one of Artemus Gordon's disguises on Wild, Wild West "Jeremiah P. Threadneedle: I travel in ladies' corsets"?
2. In one of the Flashman novels he alludes to a Louisiana/Mississippi practice of duel-by-stalking through the swamps with knife and pistol, which may just have sounded appropriately eerie, but reminded me of the mid-19th century stories about Jim Bowie and other knife fighters on the frontier.
In Tom Brown's School Days,* Tom Brown's squire father puts up a bit of prize money at a local fair for the headbreaking contest, in which, if memory serves, the local working class men hit one another over the head with sticks.
* I'm a Flashman completist?
84 is magnificent and kind of confirms stereotypes of rural English culture, so I'm going to choose to believe that shin-kicking is a fictitious sport out of a Monty Python sketch that somehow got news articles and Wikipedia entries written about it in the same way that Onion articles get recirculated as real news in China.
We used to do conditioning drills in my wing chun class that involved repeatedly kicking each other in the shins. Hurt like the dickens at first.
76: We raise hogs & beeves to eat them, and butcher's cleavers overlap eight-cut swords in everything but the extended thumbrest. Bill-hooks, flails, heavy poles, pitchforks - I don't know of a shovel form*, but IIRC there is a sickle one but it's really dangerous to practice. This is true of every use of the sickle, as far as I know.
* Just found the monk's spade. Pointy on both ends.
Pointy on both ends.
Moby? Anybody?
77 is amazing. Is the sound on purpose?
Whoah, I hadn't listened to 77 with the sound. Uh, the movie doesn't sound like that, in any case.
84/86: That's quite close to where I live; I'm amused because that particular bit of rural Gloucestershire mostly seems to be full of incredibly rich people. (I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of non-rich people, but that area is pretty famous for being full of rich toffs. Jeremy Clarkson, for instance, lives a bit to the east in Chipping Norton.)
78: You just need to make a joke that we can misconstrue as being about dawn-of-modern-capitalism/illiquid-swords.
80: You never played that game? We used to play that game when we were kids.
Let's get down to brass tacks: Parenthetical, how close are you to Jeremy Clarkson?
We also totally played the shin kicking game.
I would have thought "Chipping Norton" was some kind of quaint British insult that might be lobbed at Jeremy Clarkson. "Oy he's a bit of a chipping norton, what?" etc. Because my understanding of British culture is very complete and mature.
95: The answer is completely dependent on what kind of car I get to drive.
Let's skip to the alarmist conclusion: Parenthetical is Jeremy Clarkson.
Buy some real trousers, tosser! You're too old for early-00s-style faded jeans!
It could be rhyming slang for "flipping moron", right? Who's with me?
Did I use "tosser" correctly? My knowledge of the colorful argot of the British Isles comes largely from Garth Ennis comics.
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It's not just an aesthetic preference. It's SCIENCE. (Of course, the results could be skewed by national differences.)
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102: I question the impartiality of your conclusions, because I'm a feminist.
I am smelling the Huayra. Parenthetical, let's make this happen.
"Tosser" is slang for "stalking consultant".
I question the impartiality of your conclusions, because I'm a feminist.
Me, too! SCIENCE confirms it.
There are a lot of lovely cars around here, but I have yet to see a Huayra. (I'm still not entirely sure what that is, beyond an expensive and fast car.)
Also, I suspect that every time I try to use English slang, I get it slightly wrong, at least judging by my co-workers' faces. Last time I said "Cheers" my friend actually started laughing at me. Alas. (My favourite bit of slang around here is "my duck" (or, if you're really lucky, "me duck") which men and women of a certain age always call me when I'm helping them.)
The shin-kicking game. Brought to mind by Kevin Ware, so caution advised.
107.last: Are you wearing extremely floppy shoes?
107: Even if you're using the words right, they may just sound charmingly funny in an American accent -- I know I react that way to British friends using Americanisms.
In my experience, which I admit is twenty years old, saying "cheers" in such a way as to attract comment requires real anti-talent. 110 is probably right in general.
110: I'm sure you're right (she said as much, although I'm skeptical); it always feels mildly awkward to me, like navigating cheek kissing with people you don't know. Left or right first? One, two, or three?
Speaking of British imports, I decided to try that fasting diet posted about earlier in the week, so I'm on fast day two. I think I've had about 200 calories so far today, so I'll have room for something for dinner since I can't possibly blow it all on sugar snap peas even though I'm trying.
My eating is so much more psychological than physical, at least in this situation. On Tuesday, just knowing I was "fasting" made me want to eat everything. Tonight it's hard to give the girls their dinners and supervise without joining in. (I did eat sugar snap peas with them and I don't want them to know I'm dieting, which is the main reason this experiment probably won't last.) I didn't get unusually hungry or tired either day, nor did I eat outrageously on my other days.
One, two, or three?
If you're kissing three cheeks, you're almost certainly doing something wrong. Or very, very right.
re: 54
Savate, which I teach. Although it only goes back to the early 19th century. It massively predates most/many 'Eastern' arts that became popular in the west, though. Savate hand techniques are just normal Western boxing, though. They retained an earlier late-19th c. / early 20th c. punching style [like the sort of comic 'dukes up' fist milling olde worlde boxing style you'd see in silent movies] until about the late 60s, when the hand techniques got modernised more or less in line with orthodox modern boxing practice. The grapplin/trapping type elements got eliminated from sport competition through the mid 20th century, although some clubs still teach them.
If you're kissing three cheeks, you're almost certainly doing something wrong. Or very, very right.
re: 87
You can choose to wear shin pads in savate training, and in light contact events. They are banned in full contact, though, and shins are a major target, both as a thing to hit, and as a place to block (with the shoes).
When I first started doing it, it hurt even through the pads. These days I will sometimes spar without shin pads, as it hurts a lot less even without any attempt to condition the shins. There's still certain things that hurt like shit, though. So if we are drilling those, I'll always wear pads. No desire to undergo any pain I don't have to. There's a lot less 'suffer for your art'.
116: I said three cheeks, not three kisses on two cheeks.
118; How closely did you read the linked article?
Not very. I'm using my phone and the screen is really small.
There's a lot less 'suffer for your art'.
I often end up with a bloody knuckle or two after playing the drums. It's not so much suffering for my art. More like my clumsiness meeting lots of protruding metal objects.
113: I watched Stanster's fasting documentary, and it totally piqued my curiosity. I'd looove to try it, but of course my body's not my own for a while. Let me live vicariously through you.
Also, they come down pretty hard against protein in particular. I'd be curious to hear how people's igf levels do on the paleo diet.
Speaking of British imports, I decided to try that fasting diet posted about earlier in the week, so I'm on fast day two.
Don't you get totally undone by lassitude?
Oh, hey, almost on topic, because about exercise: I decided to buy a road bike, and convert my old Bianchi to a more upright posture and so on, rather than spend real money on a purpose-built city bike. Got a barely-used 2012 Cannondale Synapse 5 aluminum for $800 last night, and rode it for the first time this morning. Fun! So awesome to not be constantly afraid of catastrophic brake failure when going downhill!
I decided to buy a road bike, and convert my old Bianchi to a more upright posture and so on
Good call, probably. What kind of Bianchi?
I don't know. A very old steel one. With originally high-quality, but old, parts. The last straw was having a spoke snap as I was about to bike back from Tiburon, and having the guy who repaired it tell me that the rest were likely to go soon, too, and that the hubs had lots of wear on them. Not that he was exactly in an impartial position, but still.
123: Should I? I'm sort of cheating on that front because I'm having a flare-up with uterine polyps, so I'd be wanting to fall over because I'm exhausted anyway. I'm actually less tired than I'd expect to be on a normal day like this, though I'm also planning to go to bed soon.
heebie, what's the problem with protein? I know that I've been craving fat in a weird-for-me way. My protein/fat snack is thin-sliced ham (because Lee accidentally bought more ham even though she'd had me buy some, so it's around) and I usually hate ham, but it tastes amazing.
Oh, nevermind, it's a Brava, or at least it says that on it. It also says Superset, which implies it was from the 80s, which isn't surprising. It looks a lot like this one. Shimano biopace 42/52 crankset, Campy Record 13-26 8-sprocket cassette, Ultegra rear derailleur, deeply problematic 105 brakes (and less problematic 105 shifters; I have them on manual). It's just not well-configured for being a city bike in SF.
127: they said that protein essentially keeps your cells in growing and dividing mode, whereas fasting your cells switch out of that mode and into repair mode. Or something. I'm the science journalist who remembers the analogies but none of the vocabulary or actual details.
Not that protein is bad, just that it shouldbe consumed in moderation, and that it is antithetical to fasting mode. Which one wouldn't do perpetually, anyway.
129: Thanks. At some point I'll watch the video, but obviously I haven't gotten around to it yet. It really doesn't feel like fasting to eat, though, but I guess I'm just extra judgmental about what constitutes a fast.
I love how suddenly this thread veered into being about bikes and food.
Should I?
That's what happens to me if I don't eat.
Yeah, but this is some kind of semi-fast where you can have 500 calories a day or something, which is pretty far from not eating. I'll quit if it becomes intrusive, but I think it's much more likely that the problem will be that it's too hard to manage dinner for everyone else twice a week when I'm not eating a full meal rather than that I'm more tired/hungry/cranky than I am already.
I don't know. A very old steel one.
Well, if it was a road bike that probably means it's a better frame than the cannondale, but that's okay. No reason not to replace all the components on it, and nothing wrong with riding a nice frame in a more upright way.
Oh, just saw the update. That'll be a sweet city bike. Make sure to sell that cassette on ebay; it's worth good money.
Ditto for anything else campagnolo or ultegra and above level shimano.
That frame seems like you should be able to fit 700x28s on it if you want slightly wider tires, which I could imagine you might (I run 23s on my commuter bike but 28s on my road bike, and I do like them). For future reference, it is really quite easy to replace the wheels (or, for that matter, any of the components) on a bike, so if you have a nice (particularly steel) frame, you pretty much don't need a new one (unless you want to have more than one bike, which I wholeheartedly support).
Yeah, I already have 28s on the Bianchi. What I'm planning to do:
* Flat handlebar, with a higher stem.
* New brakes, because the old ones are all fucked up--they're single-pivot, and just don't stay in position, and don't grip hard, and basically fail at their only task, which is braking.
* New brake levers to go with the brakes & handlebar; either entirely new wheels, or just new spokes and hubs. Possibly an internal 3-speed hub in back, because I don't feel comfortable with the derailleur hanging off a very metal-fatigued hanger (my old derailleur got pulled into the wheel somehow awhile back, twisting the hanger way out of shape).
If the Ultegra derailleur hasn't been damaged or had its threads stripped from its time on said metal-fatigued hanger, and can handle the 10-sprocket cassette of my new bike, I might want to swap it into that one, since it's not that old--it was a gift from my father when the aforemented accident happened, about a year and a half ago, and Ultegra >> 105, and it's probably a tempting target for thieves on my city bike as is.
Formatting fail! The wheel thing was supposed to be a separate bullet-point. Oh well.
Thanks for the advice. And ooh, just did my taxes in about 20 minutes.
141
... And ooh, just did my taxes in about 20 minutes.
@#$% I have spent about 20 hours on mine and they aren't done yet.
They're surprisingly easy when you make almost no money and have no assets.
139: you might even enjoy swept-back bars. Personally I like them better than flat bars.
Singlestick was an event in the 1904 Olympics, which astonishes me. The linked article on the pedia thing says it's making a comeback in the steampunk craze. Business opportunity for ttaM.
re: 145
I have only done a little bit of canne [the French equivalent] and not remotely qualified to teach it -- Cambridge is where most of the UK canne people are based, as the savate club there does more of that. Canne is a much more 'live' thing, though, than singlestick. Lots of clubs in France, a long largely unbroken tradition, established international championships, etc. Some of the steampunk types are beginning to do it, though, albeit with curly moustaches and [miaow] poor technique.
I've linked before to vids, it's amazingly athletic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFqh4IKSA64
This is a 20 year old competition vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkuEN-Bri-g
Wow, very dashing even in a padded orange jumpsuit, which is not generally a becoming garment.
