Like football camp, but for nerds:
DC Fencers' Club
2003 Summer Fencing Camp
DC Fencers' Club
9330 Fraser Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20910
Phone: 301-562-1990
Fax: 301-309-006
1st SESSION: JULY 7-11, 2003
2nd SESSION: JULY 14-18, 2003 SOLD OUT!
From 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
Our camp is open to beginners, as well as experienced fencers. Must be at least 7 years of age.
Camp Activities Include:
Group lessons ................ Soccer
Footwork ...................... Games
Technique & Tactics ....... Fencing Videos
Competition ...................Training with nationally ranked fencers
I can see it now:
American Pie IV... "One day at fencing camp..."
Friday, May 30, 2003
Sticky Note to Self For Fencing Improvement: Lunge Lower!
Hmm, how much does Nick (B) remember from DCFC? Because I don't remember jack squat. But I was a goof during 10th grade in DCFC so that's also why. I remember doing the "I am Inigo Montoya!" speech from the Princess Bride a lot. And I remember being afflicted with 'glovehand,' that funky smell that emanates from your hand after wearing a single quilted glove for an hour and getting sweaty in it. Fortunately, I am spared that now because we aren't provided with gloves, so I bout barehanded. It doesn't seem to matter- my knuckles don't get all banged up like with epee. Foil is more genteel. It doesn't give you pin-point purple bruises.
I was not, however, spared MaskStench tonight, which is a pretty self-explanatory drawback that comes with the fencing territory. "We'll all get SARS!" someone joked about their grottiness. Horrendous SARS masks, those. They're gaping sieves. Look! I am the human fly!
I did spend the session swatting at my sparring partner (whose name he told me but I've forgotten)'s knees like an ex-epeeist/ bad foilist, but I ascribe that more to my lack of point control than any epee habits I must deprogram. The body does not remember- it's not like bicycling. I got a respectable number of hits on him though.
I was more comfortable this week with disengage 4 and 6 and combination 4-6, which I've finally figured out. Our instructor, who is a dumpy and unassuming middle-aged woman (but actually an amazingly fast ex-Olympian) trained our reaction times by dropping a piece of lint and having us try to hit it as it fell. Yes, this is one of those things you're supposed to fail. I got thoroughly exhausted, and did not feel like lifting anything heavy with my right arm all evening.
Something strange: my sparring partner asked me what school I go to.
What school do I go to?
Should I say "did" or "will"?
It made me feel discombobulated, not to have any school to identify with, like having no country, or no religion. It felt like I had turned paper thin and slipped into a crack between two sidewalk squares.
Hmm, how much does Nick (B) remember from DCFC? Because I don't remember jack squat. But I was a goof during 10th grade in DCFC so that's also why. I remember doing the "I am Inigo Montoya!" speech from the Princess Bride a lot. And I remember being afflicted with 'glovehand,' that funky smell that emanates from your hand after wearing a single quilted glove for an hour and getting sweaty in it. Fortunately, I am spared that now because we aren't provided with gloves, so I bout barehanded. It doesn't seem to matter- my knuckles don't get all banged up like with epee. Foil is more genteel. It doesn't give you pin-point purple bruises.
I was not, however, spared MaskStench tonight, which is a pretty self-explanatory drawback that comes with the fencing territory. "We'll all get SARS!" someone joked about their grottiness. Horrendous SARS masks, those. They're gaping sieves. Look! I am the human fly!
I did spend the session swatting at my sparring partner (whose name he told me but I've forgotten)'s knees like an ex-epeeist/ bad foilist, but I ascribe that more to my lack of point control than any epee habits I must deprogram. The body does not remember- it's not like bicycling. I got a respectable number of hits on him though.
I was more comfortable this week with disengage 4 and 6 and combination 4-6, which I've finally figured out. Our instructor, who is a dumpy and unassuming middle-aged woman (but actually an amazingly fast ex-Olympian) trained our reaction times by dropping a piece of lint and having us try to hit it as it fell. Yes, this is one of those things you're supposed to fail. I got thoroughly exhausted, and did not feel like lifting anything heavy with my right arm all evening.
Something strange: my sparring partner asked me what school I go to.
What school do I go to?
Should I say "did" or "will"?
It made me feel discombobulated, not to have any school to identify with, like having no country, or no religion. It felt like I had turned paper thin and slipped into a crack between two sidewalk squares.
Done with high school! Done with school! Yes, all 12 years of it, and a chapter of my life is over.
I said goodbye to RM the building today (though I will be back eventually to pay obligations). I said goodbye to those old stones and old haunts and the courtyard that sheltered me in freshman year as I sat there on the first day of school at lunch, on the grass under the trees and sky with a bunch of people I did not know but would get to know much better in the next four years, but then it was all new to me. But today I said goodbye to Rachel in the hallway in that brief gap of time between first and second period, as if I'd see her tomorrow. Mary, I never even saw. I really don't know how to say goodbyes.
I thought it was strange also that the glue that had held us together is suddenly gone. That people who have no bearing on my life any longer still make their regular orbits in the universe of my consciousness, celestial beings unaware yet that the axis has fallen away. I thank you for having been with me for the last four years, or seven or seventeen as the case may be. I know that as of now we will go our own ways... Malex had protested that he would not leave me overnight, but I know that gradually and inevitably we'll all drift apart and move on. But for now, I still think of you as my friends, at least for a little while.
When I left the building into the real world, the whole world was infused with joy.
I said goodbye to RM the building today (though I will be back eventually to pay obligations). I said goodbye to those old stones and old haunts and the courtyard that sheltered me in freshman year as I sat there on the first day of school at lunch, on the grass under the trees and sky with a bunch of people I did not know but would get to know much better in the next four years, but then it was all new to me. But today I said goodbye to Rachel in the hallway in that brief gap of time between first and second period, as if I'd see her tomorrow. Mary, I never even saw. I really don't know how to say goodbyes.
I thought it was strange also that the glue that had held us together is suddenly gone. That people who have no bearing on my life any longer still make their regular orbits in the universe of my consciousness, celestial beings unaware yet that the axis has fallen away. I thank you for having been with me for the last four years, or seven or seventeen as the case may be. I know that as of now we will go our own ways... Malex had protested that he would not leave me overnight, but I know that gradually and inevitably we'll all drift apart and move on. But for now, I still think of you as my friends, at least for a little while.
When I left the building into the real world, the whole world was infused with joy.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
You know why "Deerskin" is boring now?
Because amnesia is a boring affliction. I swear, this is the whole book after page 60 up until now.. "She did not want to think of the future. She paid scarce attention to what she was doing in the present. She could not remember her past." Well great. What does that leave me with? A singularly uninteresting teenage girl bumbling around a rotten hut, or in a forest, or in the moutains with her dog. It really doesn't matter, does it?
Because amnesia is a boring affliction. I swear, this is the whole book after page 60 up until now.. "She did not want to think of the future. She paid scarce attention to what she was doing in the present. She could not remember her past." Well great. What does that leave me with? A singularly uninteresting teenage girl bumbling around a rotten hut, or in a forest, or in the moutains with her dog. It really doesn't matter, does it?
Monday, May 26, 2003
I think that it's not quite true that Xu has no redeeming qualities, and that anyone who says so is doing himself a grave disservice in allowing several aspects of a person to cloud his judgment. Xu is not the easiest person to get along with, but he has talent, and a burning need to correct past grievances. Anyone looking for "decency" in the form of conciliation will not find it there, which is what upsets people the most, especially girls who are taught from birth that a person's self worth can be found in her social graces. Sexism and homophobia and racial militance are political points of view that don't make it very pleasant to be around him. However, I do not find a sense of sexual equality, acceptance of alternative lifestyles or acceptance of other races to be fundamental moral values, meaning that you can be a sexist gay-hating militant segregationist and a kind and decent person whose viewpoints I will despise with all my guts and with all my power try to prevent from reaching a position of public office and keep away from my children. Nothing personal; it's strictly a matter of ideology. I hate Nazis and Nazis hate me; it's not like we know each other or ever will, and I bet there are a good deal of skins who I could respect as people if I ever got to know them but could never see eye to eye with, period, and I will still fight against all they stand for. Taking hatreds to a personal level simply make these things more psychologically palatable; it becomes much easier to hate Western racial oppression by hating the White Man, and it is much easier to hate the White Man by starting with that particular White Man over there, standing on a corner, minding his own business and eating a sandwich. But if you ever get to talk to people with odious viewpoints, by which I mean the gay-bashers, the evangelical Christians, the ultra-liberals, the Church of Satanists, the animal rights activists, the anti-Americans, you'd be surprised by the vast amount of people you don't hate on any personal level. I have never talked to a White Racist except for going on some webpages and reading some materials, but I suspect the experience would be very much the same.
But on the whole, society does need people like Xu who stay proud and angry, and who do not say anything that is not true, and if it is true will say it. The Asian community needs the voice, the fire and the anger. This is our country but we have never claimed it for our own, and so we sit around like houseguests uncomfortable with touching the furniture and of course are never heard and never recognized.
And since it is a quality in him I have noticed before now, but apparently other people have not, I should like to observe here that Xu is very defensive of Puffy, and anyone who hurts him or is perceived as hurting him will suffer Xu's wholehearted wrath with all objectivity and rationality suspended. Very few people are loyal to such a degree/fault and I admire and forgive him for it if it should ever become my place to forgive.
But on the whole, society does need people like Xu who stay proud and angry, and who do not say anything that is not true, and if it is true will say it. The Asian community needs the voice, the fire and the anger. This is our country but we have never claimed it for our own, and so we sit around like houseguests uncomfortable with touching the furniture and of course are never heard and never recognized.
And since it is a quality in him I have noticed before now, but apparently other people have not, I should like to observe here that Xu is very defensive of Puffy, and anyone who hurts him or is perceived as hurting him will suffer Xu's wholehearted wrath with all objectivity and rationality suspended. Very few people are loyal to such a degree/fault and I admire and forgive him for it if it should ever become my place to forgive.
Sunday, May 25, 2003
Casting Pearls Before Swine: Wherein Angie Goes All Madame Bovary
Senior prom.. several hundred pigs in stretched satin rutting around in the mud for four hours packed in the middle of other bloated piggy bodies. Maybe you oink occasionally. I suppose this type of thing would appeal to you, if you were a pig.
I think I had imagined a dark room, and a dance floor with tables around it with seated people making polite chatter in the dark, which was all essentially correct (except for the polite chatter), and on the dance floor, awkward teenagers kind of swaying and stepping on each other's feet and trying to look like adults in a slow dance, which was essentially incorrect. I thought, if I had expected it to be boring, that it would be boring in a formal way. And that with hired limousines and nail appointments and coifed hair threaded with pearls and sparkly dresses and white roses on your wrist and red roses in suit jacket breast pockets and white gloves that go all the way up to your elbows and everything looking spot on, I was disappointed to see that what was touted to be a dance to mark the ending of my girlhood was really nothing more than a sty.
I have been to other dances and enjoyed them just as much as the next teenager (who is not as intellectually pretentious), but they were never solely "hip hop," which is my less than favorite musical genre, and I was never dressed to the nines and and made to feel like a princess beforehand. It felt like I was having mud flung at me.
It also should be said that being lost in the middle of a sea of people drives me to seek intimacy in the person next to me, which was not forthcoming. Anyone, really, to cling to. Hold me, keep me, stay with me. Be warm and comforting and be my teddy bear. Me and Rob kind of looked at each other and were like.. "No." Four years of high school and three years of middle school didn't breed any kind of physical familiarity right there. Also, since you are socially responsible for your date, you can't very well go off to a corner and sulk.
There is, however, the happy friend of the hapless dancer: Dancing In A Circle. ^__^ Hurrah! Xu "Cornell" Wang had categorized me and Rob as the "dating of the desperate," which was pretty much a case of the pot calling the kettle black since his date was a goddamn glow stick. Nonetheless, it worked out very well for him. He had four or five glowsticks and spread the happy glowstick love around so that anybody clapping to the music with a group of buoyant friends crowded around Puffy juggling streaks of light could hardly stay depressed for long. And the glowsticks would go around and people would take turns inside the circle demonstrating their pyrotechnic skillz to enthusiastic cheers and applause. It was also fun dancing with Andrew Durfor too, since while he can't and doesn't "dance", he revels in moving around in a spectacularly silly fashion, and (it's the greatest thing about him no matter where he is and what he's doing) he makes you want to have fun too. We all at one point stopped caring about looking like idiots as long as we were quite thoroughly enjoying ourselves, with the all-male conga line, then the all-everyone conga line, then the male on male dirty dancing, which Xu said was faggy but he can stick his glowsticks where the sun don't shine. Malex almost kissed Nick (B) but Nick refused his dirty man-lips. I did some dancing with Malex and then Nick which involved some crotch bumping and I took a very long bath when I got home. I suspect Nick and Malex took very long baths also (but not with each other). ("What the hell did I do last night?") Also, me and Rob did dance with each other as in "dancing while facing the other's general direction" and were very happy with that.
Tragara's: Went to Silvia's house so that James could drive us from there to the restaurant. Rob was there already (at Silvia's house, not Tragara's), and when I gave him his boutonniere all the petals fell out. XD Nice restaurant, not worth $35 normally, but I got to steal other people's food, so it was. Andrew P eats everything, and stays skinny. Andrew Durfor on principle refuses to eat salad and will most likely get fat.
"Do you know how many angels died to make that pasta?" -Andrew D on angel-hair pasta
James is very good-looking and funny and charming and easy to get along with, but unlike Puffy, who is also very good-looking and funny and charming and easy to get along with, he doesn't make me feel like an idiot, so we were all very chatty in the car. He is very (James, not Puffy) sexy when he concentrates so he was the hottest boy to grace the Postprom airhockey table. Yes, even hotter than Ersin "The Russian Machine" (insert eyeroll here). He's a Russian Machine, meaning he breaks down... I beat him 7-3 in air hockey. BOOYA! Who da "2 Puck Master" now??!! Laser tag was also very cool. As was the Iron Man Race, but I fell on my head and skinned my knee because I rolled down the inclines and the metal studs in my pants got embedded in my skin. I was quite bad at that, having gotten stuck on the first section where you climb up little blocks sticking out of a wall because the blocks kept giving way under my feet, but Josh is amazingly agile and very good at it. Puffy taught me how to play pool and was very politely patient, especially so since by his own account he has never lost a game. I felt very educated by the time I left postprom.
I have been wondering whether I like Malex "in that way" but have decided that I don't and that even if I do we have nothing in common and we'd break up anyways and then I'd say, "Let's just be friends" but since we're already friends I'm two steps ahead of myself so why not skip the relationship altogether. It's the most painful thing when you have male friends to give them away and let them go because you like to think that he's yours forever for yourself, and it's been that way with Sean from elementary school and then Harry from middle school and then Nick and then Malex and will be my curse and blessing until the day I die, to have and then nothave male friends. And with Nick since 9th grade I've given so much of his friendship away to Bivalves and Drama and that Bard Who's Been Dead for 400 Years and Naomi and Abby and Allie and Lizzie and Julia and Re-Lizzie and an unremitting parade of female attentions that no part of him is hardly mine anymore so that I don't care where the rest goes, though I may feel some pain like when they've given you a shot and pull the needle out. But the point here is that this little bit of pain upon removal makes me hallucinate that I like someone, In That Way, and this is usually an illusion that does not last very long.
Senior prom.. several hundred pigs in stretched satin rutting around in the mud for four hours packed in the middle of other bloated piggy bodies. Maybe you oink occasionally. I suppose this type of thing would appeal to you, if you were a pig.
I think I had imagined a dark room, and a dance floor with tables around it with seated people making polite chatter in the dark, which was all essentially correct (except for the polite chatter), and on the dance floor, awkward teenagers kind of swaying and stepping on each other's feet and trying to look like adults in a slow dance, which was essentially incorrect. I thought, if I had expected it to be boring, that it would be boring in a formal way. And that with hired limousines and nail appointments and coifed hair threaded with pearls and sparkly dresses and white roses on your wrist and red roses in suit jacket breast pockets and white gloves that go all the way up to your elbows and everything looking spot on, I was disappointed to see that what was touted to be a dance to mark the ending of my girlhood was really nothing more than a sty.
I have been to other dances and enjoyed them just as much as the next teenager (who is not as intellectually pretentious), but they were never solely "hip hop," which is my less than favorite musical genre, and I was never dressed to the nines and and made to feel like a princess beforehand. It felt like I was having mud flung at me.
It also should be said that being lost in the middle of a sea of people drives me to seek intimacy in the person next to me, which was not forthcoming. Anyone, really, to cling to. Hold me, keep me, stay with me. Be warm and comforting and be my teddy bear. Me and Rob kind of looked at each other and were like.. "No." Four years of high school and three years of middle school didn't breed any kind of physical familiarity right there. Also, since you are socially responsible for your date, you can't very well go off to a corner and sulk.
There is, however, the happy friend of the hapless dancer: Dancing In A Circle. ^__^ Hurrah! Xu "Cornell" Wang had categorized me and Rob as the "dating of the desperate," which was pretty much a case of the pot calling the kettle black since his date was a goddamn glow stick. Nonetheless, it worked out very well for him. He had four or five glowsticks and spread the happy glowstick love around so that anybody clapping to the music with a group of buoyant friends crowded around Puffy juggling streaks of light could hardly stay depressed for long. And the glowsticks would go around and people would take turns inside the circle demonstrating their pyrotechnic skillz to enthusiastic cheers and applause. It was also fun dancing with Andrew Durfor too, since while he can't and doesn't "dance", he revels in moving around in a spectacularly silly fashion, and (it's the greatest thing about him no matter where he is and what he's doing) he makes you want to have fun too. We all at one point stopped caring about looking like idiots as long as we were quite thoroughly enjoying ourselves, with the all-male conga line, then the all-everyone conga line, then the male on male dirty dancing, which Xu said was faggy but he can stick his glowsticks where the sun don't shine. Malex almost kissed Nick (B) but Nick refused his dirty man-lips. I did some dancing with Malex and then Nick which involved some crotch bumping and I took a very long bath when I got home. I suspect Nick and Malex took very long baths also (but not with each other). ("What the hell did I do last night?") Also, me and Rob did dance with each other as in "dancing while facing the other's general direction" and were very happy with that.
Tragara's: Went to Silvia's house so that James could drive us from there to the restaurant. Rob was there already (at Silvia's house, not Tragara's), and when I gave him his boutonniere all the petals fell out. XD Nice restaurant, not worth $35 normally, but I got to steal other people's food, so it was. Andrew P eats everything, and stays skinny. Andrew Durfor on principle refuses to eat salad and will most likely get fat.
"Do you know how many angels died to make that pasta?" -Andrew D on angel-hair pasta
James is very good-looking and funny and charming and easy to get along with, but unlike Puffy, who is also very good-looking and funny and charming and easy to get along with, he doesn't make me feel like an idiot, so we were all very chatty in the car. He is very (James, not Puffy) sexy when he concentrates so he was the hottest boy to grace the Postprom airhockey table. Yes, even hotter than Ersin "The Russian Machine" (insert eyeroll here). He's a Russian Machine, meaning he breaks down... I beat him 7-3 in air hockey. BOOYA! Who da "2 Puck Master" now??!! Laser tag was also very cool. As was the Iron Man Race, but I fell on my head and skinned my knee because I rolled down the inclines and the metal studs in my pants got embedded in my skin. I was quite bad at that, having gotten stuck on the first section where you climb up little blocks sticking out of a wall because the blocks kept giving way under my feet, but Josh is amazingly agile and very good at it. Puffy taught me how to play pool and was very politely patient, especially so since by his own account he has never lost a game. I felt very educated by the time I left postprom.
I have been wondering whether I like Malex "in that way" but have decided that I don't and that even if I do we have nothing in common and we'd break up anyways and then I'd say, "Let's just be friends" but since we're already friends I'm two steps ahead of myself so why not skip the relationship altogether. It's the most painful thing when you have male friends to give them away and let them go because you like to think that he's yours forever for yourself, and it's been that way with Sean from elementary school and then Harry from middle school and then Nick and then Malex and will be my curse and blessing until the day I die, to have and then nothave male friends. And with Nick since 9th grade I've given so much of his friendship away to Bivalves and Drama and that Bard Who's Been Dead for 400 Years and Naomi and Abby and Allie and Lizzie and Julia and Re-Lizzie and an unremitting parade of female attentions that no part of him is hardly mine anymore so that I don't care where the rest goes, though I may feel some pain like when they've given you a shot and pull the needle out. But the point here is that this little bit of pain upon removal makes me hallucinate that I like someone, In That Way, and this is usually an illusion that does not last very long.
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