Learned some new moves. Want to see them?
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It’s a little late for this, but I went to China over Spring Break. And I wish I was still there. I don’t really feel like posting about it in detail, but I thought ya’ll should know.
Funny story: I have a friend from Georgia who always says ya’ll instead of you guys. Now I’ve started saying ya’ll. It’s very convenient.
In the meantime, I’d like to show you a video I made just now…
The above is the mentioned 540 kick and aerial I just started being able to perform. The reason I posted it is because I’m submitting it to www.justtheskills.com for semi-professional advice.
The reason my title is Finally Shadowless for this post is because the 540 kick is sometimes referred to as the No-Shadow Kick, or Shadowless kick. And it sounds cool.
Ignore the pages across the top of this blog. They’re hopelessly outdated. I’ll let you know when I do come around to revising them.
I decided to finally post something when a friend of mine was asking if he could interview anybody who kept a blog for the school newspaper… So here I am… Now what.
For starters, I’m technically a tricker now. I guess I could’ve been considered one before, but not everybody would’ve agreed. You probably forgot what tricking is, so…
According to Club540.com (One of my favorite tricking websites, among others I’ll list below): Tricking – the act of executing martial arts inspired kicks and flips with your friends for the sheer sake of seeing what’s possible.
Why am I more technically a tricker (sometimes called trickster, or extreme martial artist) than I was before? (Say, when I posted that Day of Training video)
People have different standards for novice practitioners before they’re considered a tricker. Some may say you’re a tricker once you’ve mastered the cartwheel. Most don’t call themselves trickers until they’ve pulled off a 540 kick.
Well, I pulled off a 540 kick not too long ago. (A very crappy one) A week later, I discovered that I was able to perform an aerial also.
Despite all this, I’m still a “novice” tricker.
My Freshman year of high school is more than half over. It’s funny, I never realized how easy my freshman year of high school was until I registered for sophomore year.
I signed up for both Apush and Apbio. Along with Honors English and a double-topic math course.
Of course, this is nothing compared to Mitchell (Remember him? Hahah), whose also taking both AP courses and Honors English, but also has Calculus 3 (…). But he has a study hall. And he doesn’t have to worry about progressing in tricking.
Well then, goodbye until the next post. Oh, and I decided to add a section at the bottom of this post in case you didn’t understand something.
Hm… What should I call this section…
Hopefully I’ll have that figured out by the next post. Anyways, just think of it as a references section.
Other popular tricking websites-
www.justtheskills.com www.trickstutorials.com
-Check them out
A 540 kick is a hypered tornado kick. I could go on and on about what a tornado kick means or what hypering means… but I’m not. Google it.
An aerial is a no handed cartwheel.
Apush and Apbio stand for AP US History and AP Biology, respectively. AP stands for Advanced Placement.
The double-topic math course consists of Algebra 2 and Pre-Calculus.
“Why, Hello There” is a favorite phrase of Victor Kim, a breakdancer and singer. Check him about at www.victorvictorkim.com.
He also happens to be roommates with the famous KevJumba and on the same dance crew as Steve Terada (Quest Crew).
Check them all out at www.kevjumba.com, www.steve-terada.com, and www.questcrew.com
Finally, check Mitchell out at mitchell.mqxuan.com
As stated in my YouTube description, I got the idea to do this immediately after publishing my Day of Training video.
The idea is inspired by Jet Li’s “The One”, where at the end of the movie, an evil Jet Li and a good Jet Li duke it out.
The editing on this one wasn’t as good, since I was impatient with it and wanted to publish it right away. I might re-edit it again in the future.
(Note: The video has been re-edited and you can find it on my channel. The changes aren’t very noticeable unless you watch them consecutively)
I’m also planning to remake it, or make a better sequel. But pretend you didn’t read that.
I did this video for two friends of mine, mentioned at the end of the video.
The “Diamond Nationals Karate Championships” you see at the beginning was actually where I went to the night I published this. It was pretty epic.
…And it made me seem like a wannabe. Which I may or may not be.
Anyways, I saw one of my (relatively new) heroes perform there, Micah Karns.
(Steve Terada, mentioned below, also competed in the Diamond Nationals in MN 5 years ago)
Micah Karns used to have really long hair and looked like my friend Clarence (As seen in the video). But he got a haircut, and now he looks like a young Taylor Lautner. I didn’t recognize him at first.
I’m starting to think it was a mistake to take all the accelerated/honors classes I could at Moundsview.
Anyways, I’m in high school now.
… That was quick. I’m not even sure when I started this blog. Beginning of 7th grade, maybe?
The amount of homework I’m getting nowadays is quite insane compared to, say, middle school. But I suppose it’s understandable.
My primary motivation is that if my friends are surviving this, then so can I. Several of them have just as much/even more homework than I do.
That’s about it for now.
Recently I’ve acquired a new obsession and role model. The obsession is tricking, and the role model is Steve Terada.
Let’s start from the beginning…
Actually, the first time I’d seen a Steve Terada YouTube video before was more than a year ago (Shown below), and the video was my absolute favorite for months to come. Unfortunately, the video did not list his name…
However, about a month ago, #1 subscribed YouTube comedian Nigahiga posted a video called “Dear Ryan- Defeating a Ninja”
I loved the video and followed the link to the “Ninja’s” youtube account. I watched a video and I found out that Steve Terada was the same person in “Crazy Martial Arts Performance”!
Since then, I’ve started tricking. What is tricking?
Tricking is basically (sort of) a combination of several martial arts, gymnastics, acrobatics, and (break)dancing. It’s usually considered an Extreme Martial Art and is sometimes called Hypering.
Steve Terada is a tricker, and below is a tribute of his tricking.
I hope you didn’t get too tired from the videos.
Also, there’s another similar story about a tricker named Jujimufu… but that’s for another time.
For more on Steve Terada: http://www.questcrew.com/about-questcrew/steve-terada/
I just wanted to post something on my blog before I headed off to Soccer camp. Have a great summer!
I’m a boy of 14 now, and I’ve become a much more accomplished pianist, soccer player, martial artist, and acrobat since I posted my “Mythology Project” post.
I’m not sure what else to say… other than the fact that the “Piano Pieces” tab on the toolbar is very outdated.
Oh, and we’re making another movie for extra credit in our CILA class. We’ve been meaning to make another movie since our first was released (Which, you can see, was a while ago), but we never got around to finishing it.
We started out by filming a sequel for our mythology project, focusing on Hercules’s revenge and Chiron’s return from the dead. (Which is inaccurate, if you’re a mythology fan)
However, we stopped because the snow would’ve caused continuity problems. We never finished completing it because we realized that we’ve grown up a lot since the fall.
So, starting in March, we initiated another movie project, focusing on a different plot, but still CILA related, and we plan to use our unfinished footage, too. We still haven’t completed.
Wish us luck.
(PS When I say “we”, I mean the KungFucius5 group from the original project. But, we also have a friend of ours guest starring as the “big boss” of the movie.)
For our Challenge Language Arts class, we had to do a mythology project.
One of the choices was to do a movie, and that lit a spark in my mind, along with some of my friends.
I got together with 4 of my friends to make a movie (Ryder, Jack, Mitchell, Vijay). We had 3 days of filming, and one entire day editing and creating the DVD.
The day it was due, all 5 of us were groaning, thinking “Our project is so lame…”
It was shown in Ryder’s class first, and when Vijay, Jack and I were waiting for Ryder to come out, we noticed that everybody who came out was saying “That was so funny” or “That was cool!”. I assumed they were talking about somebody else’s video.
Turns out it was a huge hit! Our teacher Mrs. Roussin initially showed it to our groups’ 3 CILA classes, (which is an audience of about 90) and later showed it to the remaining CILA class that didn’t see it yet because everybody was talking about it. Now even the non-CILA people were talking about our video.
So basically our entire grade now has a pandemic of “Wesley’s a ninja” and “Jack owns a Segway” and “Mitchell can flip Wesley”. These past 2 days I could hardly walk any where without somebody telling me I’m a ninja.
Bottom line: Our movie was a success, but I’m still not satisfied with it. Part of it might come from watching it hundreds of times during editing, but my standards for action sequences are a lot higher.
What surprised me was the visual appeal that our movie had. Especially Jack’s Segway and my stunts. I thought Jack’s dog and Ryder’s nunchakus would be more eye opening, but… guess not.
We ended up getting a 50/50 on the project, and our teacher told us that if we got her a copy of the DVD, we could get extra credit.
You may be wondering: “What the heck is the movie even about…?!?!”
Well, it focuses on the Labors of Hercules. That’s all I’ll tell you. You can go to my YouTube channel (AsiaticHawk) for Behind the Scenes and KungFucius5 (the group we created solely for our movies) for the feature film.
