Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Breaking Madness!

So dumb, it’s funny. As a recovering power breaker (ok, I’m recovered – it’s been at least 10 years since I’ve regularly hit the bricks, but here is a relatively recent, feeble example), I can appreciate the gimmicks I’ve seen during demonstrations. This video, at least, shows an honest gimmick, and doesn’t try to fool the audience.

After some, nearly bone-shattering misses, or breaks that went bad, I could only watch, in disgust, as some “master” on TV, or in a shopping center demonstration would break ten slabs with two-inch spacers. I have watched in amazement as a superhuman piledriver of a martial artist hit eight slabs with his head, and saw the spray-painted foam fly into the air. Did the audience know any better? Probably not. They ate it up. Whereas I have the dane bramage, scars, and knots on my parts which can attest to my honest power breaks.

Am I bitter? Nope. It’s all a part of the show in the modern martial arts business.

2 comments:

Wang said...

As in every modern day business, there are always gimmicks and tricks people use to exploit in order to get rich and or famous. Why do people fall for it? I think that deep down inside people want to believe these gimmicks are real despite what our teachers, parents and elders have been teaching us since we were toddlers. So although I disagree with these kinds of stunts, its really hard to blame the them since there are always people out there who will beleive it.

Unknown said...

Wang,
In martial arts, in particular, many are so uneducated as to what's realistic, that they are easily fooled. That's why I'm glad we have tools like the Web to help educate. Thanks for the comment!