A fighting chance

A brief history of my warped interest in hand-to-hand combat…

The other day I was reading a book and the main character disarmed a bad guy and when someone asked him about it, said his dad (a U.S. Marshal and part-time hitman…hey, a lot of people have to take a second job to make ends meet) gave him a book called Kill or Get Killed! and made him practice all the hand-to-hand combat techniques the book contained.

Curiosity – a leading cause of feline fatalities – got the better of me and I looked it up and Kill or Get Killed! is a real book and was first published during WWII.

Hot damn.

I’ve always been a sucker for instructional books on fighting because I grew up on James Bond, Bruce Lee and Kung Fu which was a TV series about a Shaolin monk with martial arts training who roamed the Old West kicking the living shit out of bad guys even though he just wanted to be left alone to search for his brother, but kept running into jerkoffs who would start a conversation with something like: “Hey, Chinaman!”

Things would deteriorate from there.

Note of interest:

Bruce Lee, who was born in San Francisco, but grew up in Hong Kong and actually was Chinese and actually had martial arts training, did not get the part of Kwai Chang Caine, mainly because the people who made Kung Fu didn’t think America was ready for a Chinese guy playing a Chinese guy with a Chinese accent.

Apparently a TV executive said: “You can’t make a star out of a five-foot-six Chinese actor.”

And nobody ever heard of Bruce Lee again.

Instead, the part went to David Carradine who wasn’t Chinese, had no training in martial arts and pretended to have a Chinese accent by speaking haltingly, as in: “I…do…not…wish…to…fight…you” which was supposed indicate a Chinese accent or maybe someone with some kind of brain damage.

Hard to tell.

(OK, I just went back and read the synopsis of the show and Caine was supposed to be an American orphan taken in by Shaolin monks and taught to be a badass and then set loose on America because they were still working on COVID-19 and didn’t have it ready yet. Sounds like they made up some bullshit to explain why a Shaolin monk had Irish ancestry, but that’s show business.)

After Kung Fu became a hit I saw David Carradine on one of those daytime talk shows like Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas and he came on stage barefoot because his Kung Fu character didn’t wear any shoes so David figured he shouldn’t either which is one of the first times I realized a lot of actors are complete dipshits.

David Carradine would then go on to die in some weird-ass autoerotic asphyxiation incident where people choke themselves while masturbating so I’m going to stand pat on that “dipshit” assessment and move on.

If you were dressed better, I’d kick your ass

I seem to have some dim memory of getting a book on self-defense back when I was in grade school and heavily influenced by The Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV show and if I knew how to legally change my name to “Napoléon Solo” I probably would have done it back then and now that I think about it, seems like an option still open to me.

We’ll see.

As I recall, a disturbing number of the self-defense techniques outlined in the book required grabbing someone by the lapels or necktie and executing some jiu-jitsu throw which brought up an important question:

What if you’re opponent shows up wearing a T-shirt?

Not that many students at my high school wore sport coats and neckties while making their parents a shitty ashtray in shop class, so I’d have to ask anyone I was going to fight to first go home and change his clothes (I’m assuming I’d be fighting a male, but you never know) and put on an outfit I could use to my advantage.

“And none of those crappy clip-on ties either!”

I actually found The Rockford Files much more realistic when it came to fighting because when Jim Garner’s character – Jim Rockford – was accused of sucker punching somebody he said, “Just as hard as I could.”

And Jimmy didn’t seem all that guilty about it either.

Hit in the Crotch or Get Hit in the Crotch!

Alrighty, then.

So once I found out Kill or Get Killed! was a real book I got right on Amazon and ordered a copy…alcohol might have been involved…and I’m just hoping Jeff Bezos uses some part of my money to buy his workers some Lysol so they can clean their work stations and don’t get the coronavirus while he’s busy sitting in his Beverly Hills mansion looking out the window and wondering whether he should buy downtown Los Angeles.

So anyway, I bought Kill or Get Killed! off Amazon and started reading it and 8 pages in came across this illustration:

I cannot tell you how much I love this photograph.

First: note that the guy kneeing the other guy in the crotch has his left hand in his pocket. Then notice that he’s got his right hand on the other guy’s shoulder like it’s a friendly gesture:

“Hey, Bob, just thought I’d drop by and knee you in the testicles.”

I really wish I’d bought this book before I got laid off at the Star, because now I know how I should have said goodbye to some of my former employers.  

I also like that the guy getting his nuts crushed appears to have no reaction; he doesn’t duck or twist or throw his hands up, he just stands there and takes a knee to the family jewels which is kinda how I hope some of my former employers would have reacted:

“Yeah…now that I think about it, I probably deserve this.”

So I’m only eight pages in and I already think this is one of my greatest purchases ever and I can’t wait to get to page 24 and figure out what these guys are doing:

It looks like some kind of combat, but I’m not sure you’d describe it as hand-to-hand. Guess I better read the rest of the book quickly so I can fight off anybody who tries to make me do that.

Have a nice weekend and if you spend some time with friends, don’t forget to cover your crotch.