Welcome to Issue #038 of Zen in the Art of Fighting

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Five Things Worth Sharing

1. One Good Picture: A Bug Jumps Out of the Sky

Bug had his bachelor party last weekend and his groomsmen forced him to confront his fear of heights. How, you may ask? They took him skydiving.

The whole experience is hilariously documented over video, beginning with a one-sentence last will and testament: "[Erica] gets everything so long as she keeps Snickers alive."

Scoring the relative danger of his bachelor party vs my bachelorette party, I think his party was more objectively dangerous. While my Saturday-morning hangover felt life-threatening at the time, it was nothing close to jumping out of a plane.

2. Something I'm Writing: A soon-to-be-published Q+A with OKC-based grappler, Troy Russell

I met Troy two years ago while on the road, and he largely flew under the radar in the jiu-jitsu community until this May, when he had an impressive debut on the prestigious grappling promotion, Who’s Number One.

Ahead of his second showing on the WNO promotion in August, I got the chance to do a deep-dive interview with him on his professional grappling career, catch up on our lives in the last two years, and generally soak up the gratitude and graciousness that made him such a memorable figure from the trip and that set him apart from many figures in the sport.

It’s hard to believe that a year ago I was writing my first piece for FloGrappling on Oklahoma-based, American legend Rafael Lovato Jr. One year later, I find myself back in Oklahoma and in the orbit of Lovato Jr. by writing about Troy, one of his black belts.

3. Something I'm Listening To: The Audiobook of Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian.

I mentioned listening to a podcast about this book a few issues back. After that podcast, I decided to pick up the book and “read-listen” to it. I was inspiring, heartbreaking, and was complemented well by the two-part HBO series for those who prefer watching a movie to reading or listening to a book.

When we went out for dinner on Friday night and golf was on the television above the bar, I found myself actually watching it, able to appreciate the game and the players much more than I would have been able to only a few weeks ago. What Tiger Woods did for golf–and the cost of it to his body, his sanity, his family, and more–is more than I ever could have imagined. What his presence and achievements did for professional sports is even greater.

4. Something I'm Watching: Barbie (note: some spoilers below)

Along with probably half of the world, I saw Barbie last weekend. It was as far afield as you can imagine from the movie about child sex trafficking (which I wrote about last issue) or the making of the atomic bomb. In a sentence: I respected it more than I liked it, and I didn't like it as much as I wanted to.

I respect that it must have been a massive pain to get made: Solving for the schedules and desires of big-name actors, the directorial vision of Greta Gerwig, the production vision of Margot Robbie, and the corporate demands of Mattel must have been a gauntlet. Despite competing creative and corporate ambitions, the team managed to get a movie to the box office. I figure the shared goal of "we all want to make a lot of money" didn't hurt and probably helped align the house.

I respect the marketing efforts behind it. Even if there wasn’t killer IP in the mix, all the tactics turned the film from a movie release into a global cultural event. Even if I didn't want to see the movie, I wouldn't have been able to ignore the movie.

I respect that Mattel was able to laugh at its failures, point blank, and not take itself too seriously in the movie. Will Ferrell's portrayal as the CEO contributed to that. So did moments like Sugar Daddy Ken. It bodes well for Mattel's likely efforts to be the next Marvel and make a whole cinematic universe around its toy franchises.​

My two main dings are on the storytelling of Barbie:

1. The stakes of the plot aren't baked. I'll be the first to say that I know this is a movie about a children's toy, but the plot should be clearer, especially because a lot of people are taking their kids to see this. Why Barbie goes to The Real World is mostly explained, even if parts don't make sense. Why it's problematic to have Barbie in The Real World and humans in Barbie Land is mostly unexplained.

The movie doesn't meaningfully address the core question of "What is the full scope of negative consequences when these worlds collide?" For example, I was expecting the Barbie's "human-ness" to accelerate and lend urgency to her journey in The Real World (e.g. imagine if her getting flat feet snowballed into her getting crow's feet the longer her mission goes unresolved!) Instead, nothing changes. Intrusive thoughts, cellulite, and flat feet are the worst she has to suffer (which, to be fair, if her "symptoms" are strictly tied to her owner's drawings of her, it makes sense, but I think there was an opportunity for more thought and depth here).

In the end, nothing particularly serious happens when humans enter the doll world and vice versa (unless you consider the Ken takeover serious--which I struggled to after the word "Patriarchy" got repeated for the umpteenth time). I was thinking there might be some space-time continuum or "butterfly effect" thing going on, where Barbie's execs have a real and dangerous problem on their hands if Barbie doesn't get back in her box and the portal is closed. But that doesn't happen.

2. The moments of redemption don't feel earned. One place where this is obvious in the relationship between Barbie and Sasha, the daughter character. Sasha comes in hot calling Barbie a fascist and is very "teenage-brand cruel" to her. When the two are friendly later on, it doesn't quite jive for me. Sasha seems like a selfish, cold kid, and the moments of action in the movie don't give me credible reasons to believe that she's legitimately transformed and warmed toward Barbie.

While these things didn't get in the way of my enjoying the costumes, the actors, the soundtrack, and the whole zeitgeist, I didn't like the movie as much as the movie wanted me to like it. Call me Cynical Barbie or write it off to the movie's Kenergy, but the movie needs to go back and figure out what it is without Barbie--from a storytelling perspective, if nothing else.

​

5. Something I'm Reading: The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh.

I’m not a huge football fan and have only done one Fantasy Draft in my life, I think I’ve ended up reading one football opus a year for the last four years (Friday Night Lights, “Urban Meyer Will Be Home for Dinner”, It's Better to be Feared) and I find myself increasingly drawn to how people write about the sport, how the teams get built, and how the franchises get managed.

This book is not a football book so much as a leadership textbook that happens to be from a football coach, specifically, the coach of the five-time Super Bowl-winning San Francisco 49ers. So far, every page has something highlighted on it, but my favorite riff so far is this one:

That's all I've got for this edition. Happy almost-August and see you in two weeks,

EZ

PS: I welcome more discussion about Barbie. Please reply and share your thoughts, whether I've got it all wrong and Barbie was amazing or if you've got hot, potentially-unpopular takes of your own.

PPS: Some Important Housekeeping!

The next time you see this newsletter, it will be via Substack.

I’ve decided to go all-in on a single platform for sharing my writing, both for newsletters like this one and my longform pieces. Less is more, and less time managing technical overhead = more time focused on actual writing. So everything I intend to produce, content-wise, moving forward will lie under either my personal handles or under “The Submission Artist.”

Much as I liked the name “Zen in the Art of Fighting” as a nod to my last name, to Ray Bradbury’s collection of essays and to a number of books (some well known, some lesser known), it is a mouthful and can be hard to spell as a handle on Instagram.

“The Submission Artist” is catchier, easier to spell, more memorable, and still captures the nods to writing and combat sports, and even has a small nod to tech (even if submission in the tech world is mostly of apps to app stores, pull requests for review, and now Mark Zuckerberg training MMA).

Anyway, there won't be a disruption to service. What this means, mostly, is you'll hear from me a little more and the email format will probably look better than this one.

Looking forward to seeing you there!