Iron Crotch

[Greg]

As many as it takes.

I'm in a bad enough mood as it is.

[Greg]

The interview part of the filming went well except for the pilot that was practicing landings at a nearby airport. Yesterday not a single plane. Today, constant plane noise. But we got through the questions with most of our humor intact.

Things went to Hell for the calligraphy part of the day. I had a setup to do it vertically for the camera angle. That is not how GM Tu likes to do it. Or anyone for that matter. They want to do it on a table. Plus there were camera tripods and light stands he had to manuever. And there wasn't quite enough room between the camera and the paper for his brush. GM Tu tried but he never got comfortable. There was a lot of heated Chinese between GM Tu and Mrs. GM Tu. It got ugly.

Eventually, I came to my senses and we got out the table. GM Tu knocked out the calligraphy in a few minutes. We went through a lot of paper.

All done. I travel to Raymond tomorrow.

[Drunk Monk]

No more do overs?

[Greg]

I think I'm done. I'm looking at the footage and it's sharp. The audio sounds good. I think I'm in the post-production phase.

So much footage. So much to be done.

The Family Tu couldn't have been any nicer to me. I'm amazed by their generosity. It was nice talking to Julie and Jenny. Sandy played Tiger Mom over all of us. She watched me the closest.

I would hang out with them more.

[Greg]

穩定心跳傳書有何用處
What is the use of stable heartbeat text messaging?

Don't forget, Greg, at some point to talk about how the calligraphy filming went. I was ready for Tu to kill me and Sandy to kill everyone.

[Drunk Monk]

May have already killed you. Some dim mak is time delayed. I’ve yet to witness that irl, but if anyone could do it, it’s Tu.

[Greg]

All I know is if GM Tu gives me one more instance where he says "There are five such and such" and then only gives me four things, I'll be giving him the dim mak

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

All I know is if GM Tu gives me one more instance where he says "There are five such and such" and then only gives me four things, I'll be giving him the dim mak

The Fifth Way cannot be known by Gwai Lo.

[Greg]

The Fifth Way cannot be known by Gwai Lo.

Dammit.

[Drunk Monk]

That’s a constant in the wulin. Qi Jiguang started this trend of lists of techniques with his pivotal treatise and many modern masters follow suite but they don’t seem to know why. The technique list is damn annoying because they feel they’re transmitting some sacred concepts but really they’re just rattling off some list that’s been passed down that may well have lost its meaning. Couple that with the cosmological penchant for certain numbers like 5, 9, 18, 108, and we get these essentially empty lists.

The biggest question in my mind about GM Tu is how much is his original thinking and how much is from extant literature. He claims a Daoist foundation but I can’t penetrate the old texts because so little of it has been translated. Did he make it all up and just point to obscure and abstract references? It would take a massive dive to prove it either way, something for daoist scholars, but I doubt anyone would go there because of its prurient nature.

He had a young pupil at one point that was looking into it. I had a long discussion with him at a tournament years ago and remember he had a massive bruise on his hand from overdoing Tu’s mantra practice. I’ve completely lost track of him - can’t even remember his name now but I remember our conversation well. I never brought it up for your research Greg because it’s a huge rabbit hole and I don’t have the lead for it anymore.

[Greg]

I am very busy climbing out of this rabbit hole to venture into any others.

It's dumber than that in the lists. In one instance he said there were five types of calligraphy and then only gave me four types. It makes my head ring

[Drunk Monk]

The 5 types of calligraphy are:
Standard
Running
Cursive
Chop

[Greg]

You are a helper..

Sadly, I know the one you left out.

[Drunk Monk]

So you got the five now? 

And just to check - which style does GM Tu do mostly? This is a test.

[Greg]

I had it immediately when he said five and only listed four.

Tu does them all. I made him do them all. And that's when I almost learned about the delayed dim mak.