Most people went to the Crucible’s second showing tonight, so Patti had asked if Jane and I could take care of the beginners class. Pierre and I got there the same time and he helped me roll out the carpets, James dropped by for a few minutes. He gave us a quick run down of the show and said the fight set Wushu West does is incredible. James is also leaving for Thailand for 2 months, so I hope he comes back in one piece.

While I was warming up the kid, Patti told me the Director of The Crucible called her and was not happy about the youtube vidoe’s. This is understandable I guess, but mind you I’m a tad sensitive on how information is relayed to me. When you say “Hey, can you remove those videos from youtube?” I’m okay with that. But then you email me with not very friendly letter like this:

Sent:  	January 11, 2007, 02:26 PM

Subject: 	Please Remove the Crucible's fotage from U-TUBE Immeadately!

Message: 	

Please Remove all the Crucible's fotage of it's fire ballet and rehursals. You are in voilation of the contract between The Crucible and Wushu west and could jepordize the payment to Wushu West. You are also not respecting the rights of Flavor group and The Crucible.



Questions? Call Michael 510-xxx-xxxx

I get a little annoyed, why? Because first off, no one really cares about this clip on youtube, the only people watching it are those who ALREADY got tickets (not cheap ones either) for the show to see their own classmates perform. Second, the evil movie stealing community on the interweb aren’t salivating over this, there is no interest in a 2 minute clip. And usually the more of a pitt bull approach you have to “protecting” your content, the less its really worth, it says that your more insecure than anything else. Also, I did give credit to both Wushu West and The Crucibles “flavor” team in the descrīption, but I guess I cannot expect someone to read a trivial thing as that when they have numerous spelling errors in their message. Anyway, enough of that, I did my duty as an angry internet user and bitched about it online.

Back to the class. I warmed up the kids with the basic full-range type movements, then a bit of loose kicks, and I had Raymond lead them running around the class a bit. He did a good job and kept up the pace, they did however stop on their own so I had them do 5 more laps. Then I had them do lunges back and forth about 5 times, not to punish them (though it did keep them quite) but because it was chilly and that has to be one of the best ways to warm up your legs. Every time we would do something, both Cybel and Haniel would protest and say something like “Can we play dodge ball now?” or “Can we just do cartwheels?”… usually when they said that I would continue with basics, but I did give in to playing Wushu Tag, and I tried to keep it under 10 minutes. By the time we started basics (which we a lot of front-stretch kicks) Jane had showed up and that was a relief. I was nice to have someone there to help keep the organized. I was correcting a lot of them on keeping their arms out, straight, and palms pushed out, so after they did all three basic kicks, I had them hold their arms out for a few minutes. Ahh, the cries of pain was delicious :) Then they did front sweep (which they protested they did not know how to do), back sweep, then Jane reminded me they haven’t done the punch snap-kick at all, so we had them do that plus holding the kick out for 3-5 seconds. Two lines of that and they were ready for a water break. They did jumping for a bit after that, and we gave them the options of weapon basics or open hand. I lead a few of them doing staff basics, and when I turned my attention to one student ( can’t remember her name ), Ray, Cybel and Haniel were laying down chatting. I told them it was time for burpee’s since they seemed to be finished with that :) So it was 3 sprints, burpee’s, then the more back and forth sprints. After that it was frog leap down, duck-walk back two times. Then I had jump in place, but moving very slowly, I did that with them, and they finished too early, so the next time Umaru did it, and the rule was, whoever finished before Umaru had to do 20 pushups. They did a much better job that time around. Lastly I had them stretch again, then then three “advanced” people took their place on the carpet as they saluted and left. It was getting around 7:45 by that time, so we did some sprints, front, inside and outside kicks and then jumping stuff. I felt a little better about my jumps, I haven’t been up on them since I hurt my back and now that it feels better I can really get into things again. Unfortunately it has been hard to keep the stamina up, and its going to be really bad when Patti is back full time :) She’s going to make up for lost time that is for sure. Umaru and I finished off with target pad kicking again, then the 3 of us rolled up the carpets and cleaned up. I only had to change my shirt once, so I didn’t get all that good of a workout but oh well.