Honor Blackman's Book of Self Defense

[Drunk Monk]

I had this book in my hands during an epic Mission book crawl, and I really want to say it was with CF of greg, but maybe that's a false memory. Did we do an epic Mission book crawl together many years ago? Any of you? Ah well, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I found this book in the very back of one of those precious Mission used bookstores and it was only like a dollar, but I didn't buy it because I was already loaded down with dozens of heavy books from the previous portion of the crawl. So I put it back on the shelf.

And I regretted that until last week. How could I have let such a treasure go?

Last week, I had lunch with an old Kung Fu brother, someone I hadn't seen in the flesh in many years. He had been working at the used bookstore in Mountain View (you know who, cf) but recently left that job after they failed to make payroll. That bookstore is about to bite the dust, he says. He also said that said bookstore tossed out a bin of books almost every day. And in the midst of that, he found Honor's book and gifted it to me.

This book is truly a treasure. Honor was the first Avenger hottie, and of course, Pussy Galore, but she admits in the book that she only had a few months of judo prior to writing this book. She credits her coaches, Joe and Doug Robinson, two very fit Londoners, and they do make her look really good as the fall guys. Her skills are mediocre at best. Her body position is often off, but we'll forgive that as she's easy on the eyes. The intro is quite clear, even funny in regards to how hard it was to hide a gun or a knife (she even mentions a sword ) in her skimpy costumes. It's written in that perfectly English manner. And the photos are really good - B&W but catches the action well, something that's not so easy even when staged like this. We do it all the time, but we have digital cameras and can quickly review our shot. The bulk of the techniques are scenarios of guys getting fresh with Honor, and then Honor thrashing them. Here's my fav quote by Honor: "Incidentally, don't get too carried away by this one: if you use your full force on his elbow joint you'll probably break his arm and end up having to lend him cigarettes while you telephone for an ambulance."

[cranefly]

You and I did a book crawl in SF back when you and S lived in Daly City, if I recall correctly. LCF and I were in a Chinese culture and martial arts acquisition phase, getting books on idioms, symbolism, language, art, culture, etc.

This might have been when LCF was starting on her lion dance novel. Me, I was always working on something with a Chinese setting. Oddly, I've never really completed or sold anything with a specific martial arts context -- as far as I can recall. Very odd.

During our crawl, I remember at one point we were just starting down stairs to the Bart, and there was this loud rush of footsteps of someone passing close by, and you turned with noticeable alertness to check the dude. That's when I realized we weren't in a very good part of town, and I was rather conspicuous carrying two huge, heavy bags of books.

We would have been a whole lot safer with Honor Blackman at our side. But nooooo, you had to put that book back.

(Just a guess that this might have been the occasion.)

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I'm going to say it was CF. I don't recall any book crawl.

Oooh, rhyming.

[Drunk Monk]

See? There's still some left in the memory banks.