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Meff, by John Doran

How to Get Properly Fit: A Realistic Guide for Lazy People

In the third instalment of his MEFF column, John Doran talks to writer, Oxbow frontman and martial artist Eugene S Robinson about the first steps towards becoming "Fight Club fit".
Photo courtesy of Supersonic Festival

The author, Eugene Robinson, Penny Rimbaud of CRASS, Anthea Leyland of Thrill Jockey (Photo courtesy of Supersonic Festival)

My name is John Doran and I write about music. The young bucks who run VICE's website thought it would be amusing to employ a 44-year-old who wants to get "Fight Club fit" before his 45th birthday.

In case you were wondering or simply too lazy to use urban dictionary, "meff" is Scouse/Woollyback slang for tramp (meff = meths = methylated spirits). It also means someone who looks odd; someone who doesn't fit in. As in, "Your Adidas Samba are boss la, look at that meff Doran, he can't even afford Dunlop Green Flash. Chin him and grab his wallet."

Annoncering

MEFF 3: LET'S START TODAY!

Eugene S Robinson (Portraits by Kasia Robinson)

It's hard to see why anyone would want to be a journalist. You are universally reviled, badly paid and, thanks to the lifestyle, have the same life expectancy as an astronaut, a Russian airline pilot or one of those geologists who takes gas samples from volcanic vents. I've been a hack for two decades now and all I have to show for it is galloping paranoia, tinnitus, an aching pancreas and a nervous twitch. However, if I had a gun to my head, and the lunatic with the finger on the trigger was demanding to hear something positive about my profession, I guess I'd say that after 20 years or so it does confer a certain kind of status upon you – in the same way that entering a portaloo at Reading Festival on the Sunday confers a certain kind of perfume upon your clothes. If you hang around long enough – and successfully avoid death by cirrhosis, immolation via smoking in bed or gout – you will eventually end up in a strange hinterland that lies somewhere between stalker and D-list celebrity, although admittedly much closer to the former than the latter.

What this means in practical terms is that even though hated, poor and likely to die at any second, I sometimes get to ask cool people cool questions for spurious features like this one and not have them immediately tell me to fuck off.

When I started writing this series about my attempt to get "Fight Club fit" before my 45th birthday next June, the first thing I did was compile a wish list of people who would be well placed to give me advice, and I was delighted that the person at the top of my list – the first person I approached – Mr Eugene S Robinson, said yes.

Annoncering

And just because there's always one, I'm going to momentarily slow down to the speed of the slowest in the class and explain who Mr Eugene S Robinson is.

An extremely snappy dresser, Eugene is the frontman of Oxbow – a musical outfit who are, without doubt, much, much better than the band you are in. (Don't feel bad, Oxbow are much better than the band most people are in.) Imagine if you can, Cine-8 footage of you as a kid (the id) stabbing your father (the superego) savagely and repeatedly in the face with a kitchen knife as your mother (the ego), Gaffa-taped to a chair, looks on helpless and horrified. Imagine a rusty metal box inside Don Van Vilet's cellar – you know, the one with the padlock on the outside of the door and too many coat hooks on the hallway wall. Well, inside the box is a photograph of Bo Didley in a bondage harness – the one taken for the front cover of Black Gladiator, a tear-stained page ripped out of The Story of the Eye by Lord Auch, a cum-stained page ripped out of Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault, a cassette recording of Spiritual Unity, a set of darts with novelty pornographic flights and a tarot card depicting The Tower. Imagine, if you will, a gentleman's brogue made by Loake of Kettering, Northamptonshire, by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, stamping down on the face of humanity forever, in time with "Mutiny in Heaven" by the Birthday Party.

Annoncering

Imagine a nun kneeling down in the driving rain on the hard shoulder of a motorway, howling with anguish and tears as she holds a single child's shoe in her shaking hands.

Now you know exactly what Oxbow sound like, put it out of your mind, for it is Mr Eugene S Robinson the wordsmith we're interested in today. As well as fine journalism and poetry, he is responsible for writing one of my favourite bits of prose on the fistic arts, Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass Kicking But Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking – a book which is technically banned in the UK but you can get an electronic version of here (and yes, I have also read The Fight by Norman Mailer, Karate Is a Thing of the Spirit by Harry Crews and The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, thanks for asking).

I guess it's not just the fact that your man really can write, but, more to the point, he really can fight as well – which gives him an edge over the rest of us. He has competed at a high enough level in several martial arts and won a couple of International Brazilian Ju Jitsu Federation world titles. In fact, when I speak to him on Skype, he's fresh from taking the silver medal in a competition. He says he is not magnanimous in defeat and is angry with himself over the result, especially seeing as he and the gold winner were tied until the dying seconds of the final. He says that this anger, as much as anything else, is what motivates him to keep on getting back in the ring. It should be said, angry or not, Eugene is – and always has been – courteous to fault and jovial every time I've talked to him. There's a real difference in the way competition fighters and tough-nuts you meet in pubs and clubs carry themselves, with the former always coming across as much more relaxed than the latter.

Annoncering

So, I reckon if anyone can give me the advice I need, it's Eugene.

I tell him that I'm 44 years old. I tell him that I've never been fit in my life. And I tell him I've never had a fight in my life before either.

He raises one eyebrow and laughs: "So you're doubly screwed."

I took a severe beating when I was 13 – to the extent that I needed eye surgery – and that coloured my childhood a little. But then I snapped out of it, weirdly enough, after I took another severe beating when I was about 22, which saw me end up in hospital again. Since then I've never been in a fight situation. But just recently there was a guy who started on me. He was exactly my age and he looked exactly like me; I think this was why I was staring at him. And he was like, "What the fuck are you looking at? I'm going to fucking kill you, etc." And I was like, "Wow. No one's said anything like that to me since grunge broke." That's the background. And where I am now is I've gone on a diet and I've started going to the gym, but I'm really terrible at sticking at these things… so what would be your practical advice to me?

He says: "The thing I want to advise you to do is something that I know you will be able to do. The sort of thing that after a month you're not going to go: 'Ahhhh, this is really fucking stupid, it's really boring, I don't want to do it.' And I think the key is simply to be fit enough to make it through a fight. I'll tell you a story. My drummer, Greg Davis, once saw these two railroad workers get into an argument. They were about 40 years old and they were screaming at each other about something or other. And then, bit by bit, they started taking off their gloves, taking off their hard helmets, taking off their vests and then started swinging at each other with their full force. After about 35 seconds, they were both still standing but completely out of breath, so they had to stop fighting and, slowly, put their vests and their hard hats and their gloves back on [laughs].

Annoncering

"They had to admit that – ha, ha, ha – they had to admit that it was a draw! So the reality of it is that most people challenging you won't have the wind, the ability or the strength to knock you out with one punch. So then you're just talking about an endurance battle, and any reasonably fit person can weather any kind of beating; unless they're dealing with a professional fighter, in which case they're fucked right from the beginning. But the reality of it is, most professional fighters avoid getting into fights in public because it's not interesting fighting someone who doesn't know anything. I only fight guys in public who really push the issue. And I know they're not professional because a professional would never push the issue…"

Okay, that's mildly reassuring, I tell him. So where do I start?

He says: "You want to look at stuff you can do at home. Body weight exercises. I'm a big fan of some of the pilates stuff because you can spend 15 minutes a day doing it and, in general, you're going to be more fit, more toned and more body balanced if you do it. You can do deep knee bends while watching TV. And jumping rope is hard and miserable, but I might suggest it if I thought you were serious [laughs]. But jumping rope is a great way to keep in shape, if you live on the ground floor of your apartment building, I guess. You might think: 'Ah, I could do that for ten minutes…' No you couldn't. It's really hard.

Annoncering

Anything else?

"Well, I live about two miles away from where I work, and one day I just decided I was going to walk to work every day. So I did, and I noticed an appreciable difference in my conditioning for fighting. At first I didn't know where it was coming from, and then I realised, 'Man, the only thing I'm doing differently outside of fighting is walking, and it's really making a difference to my total fitness and health.' If you had asked me about this ten years ago I would have said, 'Complete and total bullshit.' But walking at a vigorous pace for 20 to 25 minutes every day? That is pretty substantial."

If I manage to get properly fit, what would be a minimum entry martial art for me to look at?

"I'm still a big fan of Brazilian ju jitsu and I'll tell you why. Something like 75 percent of fights end up on the ground at some point; so at that point you're grabbing somebody or they're grabbing you and it really behooves you to figure out what to do next. I look at it like a military engagement: yeah, it's good to have big warplanes carrying lots of bombs, but it's even better to have a functioning infantry. And the 'infantry' in this instance would be an analog for what happens when someone is physically all over you and controlling your body. And this is why I like BJJ for the older athlete as well. Throwing a punch is chaos, and managing it through boxing or Muay Thai boxing is the art of managing chaos. I'm not really quite sure how hard I'm delivering the punch, I'm not really quite sure what will happen if he moves while I'm punching him. I could break my arm… there are a lot of unintended consequences and a lot of unknown quantities when it comes to punching people. But with ju jitsu or any grappling art, outside of judo, what you're talking about really is control. And a lot of times when I'm fighting with a guy and I'm grappling with him, I'm talking to him while it's happening."

Annoncering

What? Having a chat?

"I got into a fight with a guy in Washington DC which somebody managed to catch on video, and you see me say to the guy at the end when he's all hemmed in and twisted up like a pretzel: 'Are you OK?' Ha ha ha! But what I really mean is: 'Are you OK? If I let you up will I have to throw you down again and pretzel you all up again? Or are you OK with what just happened to you?'"

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What are the downsides to it?

"You can end up with injuries. I'm injured right now but I was competing this past weekend, which is unusual circumstances. I've got a muscle pull, which is not that big of a deal. I feel safer and more comfortable doing [BJJ], and bear in mind I'm 53 fucking years old and I'm better off doing this kind of fighting than I would be doing boxing at this point in time for me."

(I think to myself: '53 fucking years old! I thought he was younger than me! He must have a portrait in his attic that looks like Jeff Monson's granddad.')

Not wanting to state the obvious, but I'm probably a lot different to you, Eugene. I mean, I know we both love portentous and pretentious heavy rock music and both love writing, but I get the sense from Fight and your articles that you have a strong desire to fight. I don't have any desire to fight at all, the idea of it feels really alien to me. Is this an insurmountable obstacle?

Annoncering

"No, no, no. You've got that wrong. I actually don't have a desire to fight. I have a desire to proceed through life unmolested. And I've discovered over time there are a lot of ways to deal with this. Some people have a large enough ego base that when they are confronted they can say to themselves, 'Look, I have ego to spare. That guy called me a stupid sonofabitch but I'm just going to keep on walking because it doesn't really have that much effect on me.' I've studied martial arts long enough that I'm in that camp at this point. But if I was going to have a run through of the recent fights that I've had, then you'd find that there had been an attempt by me to walk away and there was somebody who was foolish enough to continue to put themselves in front of me and block my path, confusing my magnanimity for cowardice. And this is a fatal mistake. At base root, I'm a nice guy… and do you know what? I like being a nice guy. But I also really don't like being trifled with. I look at it as a public service that I can and will perform. Because the next time [the aggressor] meets some guy who is shy and retiring, maybe he will think, 'You know what… that guy is not fucking with me, I'll just leave him alone.' That would be my goal. My goal since I started fighting is to be left alone. And people who make it their practice and trade to bully others are always looking for the guy who wants to be left alone because they figure there's a reason he wants to be left alone… they think he's an easy victim. And I've devoted a lifetime to making sure that's not the case for me."

Annoncering

What about the chicken and egg aspect of this? To what extent does your ability to fight get you into fight situations?

"Nah. Not really. At the end of the day, I guarantee you if a fight is averted we both end up leaving feeling OK. The other guy feels like maybe he's avoided something terrible but he hasn't lost any face, and I feel like I'm a successful martial artist. I don't have anyone challenging me just to see how they're going to do. I have people on odd occasion who come to an Oxbow show and try to incite me to fight, but usually these people are enemies of art. That's my feeling about it. Typically I will look at the bouncers or the club owners and be like, 'Are you going to deal with this? How about you sing while I handle this? Oh, what's that? You don't want to sing? OK, well, you handle the trouble while I sing then.' But I don't get it a lot… most recently it happened in Brussels, but the guy was a known show disrupter and had done the same thing to Lydia Lunch, and she was doing some spoken word performance. But she had to change her show to accommodate this guy. I did not. I was doing Sal Mineo with Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu, and this guy was hitting the synthesisers. I said, 'Is it your desire that I strike you that I might finish the show?' And the guy said, 'You go do what you gotta do.'

"Look, I just can't have people fucking up the show. If you don't like the show, go to the front desk and ask for your money back. You can send me a passionate email telling me how much you don't like what I do. But if you're going to try and stop me from performing then you're an enemy of art and I have to stop you. Just like if I'm walking down the street and we cross swords and I'm trying to get past but you keep on blocking my way, you put me in a position where I have to do something. I don't want to do it, but I have to for everyone who won't do it."

Annoncering

So on the odd occasion you find yourself in a fight situation, is there any advantage to being a guy of a certain vintage – you know, someone who isn't in the first flush of youth any more?

"It depends on how you want to avoid it. Klaus Flouride, the bass player from the Dead Kennedys, who produced some of my old punk band's records, is only 5'4". He would get into bar fights and said that the first thing he would do if it was going badly would be to step off his stool so the guy could see the full measure of him, as if to say, 'Are you really going to gain anything by beating me up?' And it was a really clever device because the other guy would often think, 'Shit! I'm going to beat up this little guy and who is going to be impressed? No one.' So I've got certain things… I've got some grey in my hair and people might say, 'Oh, are you going to beat up that old man?' But I think in terms of being physical and imposing… well, maybe you're talking about the quality of gravitas and, yeah, I think that's something. Mostly because older men fight differently. I realised this when I used to play rugby when I was 18. We would do matches against guys who seemed really old to me – they were probably in their late 30s – and these guys were just fucking brutal. They would be biting my cheek in the scrum, punching me in the face, and as an 18 or 19-year-old I had no idea of where these guys were coming from. But now, as an older guy, I completely understand it. We, in general, are absolutely not playing. We are completely serious. This lion in the winter thing? It is very specifically about life and death. It's different for a young guy. A 20-year-old will go out for a laugh and will have a dust up… he'll exchange blows with his friend… and at the end of it he'll go back into the bar and have a drink with him. Older guys aren't doing this, and if you mess with them you are running the risk of getting very seriously hurt. When I interviewed Kevin Weeks in Fight – the guy who had been working with Whitey Bulger, the Boston Irish Mafia guy – I guarantee you he is much more formidable as an older man than he was at the prime of his crime career, and that's fucking scary. He knows not to expect any mercy should he slip."

In the whole American post-punk, noise rock, art rock, call it what you will underground scene, who are the other tough guys?

"Hmmm. You know, I asked Steve Albini the same question once when we were talking and he was super impressed with [Jesus Lizard frontman] David Yow's physicality. And I talked to Yow about this and he said, 'I don't know why Albini would have said that. I took karate as a kid and I didn't really like it, but mostly I spent my time playing soccer. So I was just fit.' So he was muscular and fit, but he would never peg himself as a tough guy. But you know who were genuine tough guys? T.S.O.L. – if you're going back as far as the hardcore punk days. A lot of guys from Boston, like Al Barile from SSD… although I never saw him fight. I did see a lot of New York hardcore guys fight. A guy like [Agnostic Front guitarist] Vinnie Stigma – who takes martial arts – I never saw him fight. But Harley Flanagan [bassist and founder of The Cro-Mags], who's now a black belt in Brazilian ju jitsu, was a tough guy, and I saw him fight a bunch. He was a pretty phenomenal street fighter. But there aren't really any tough guys in post-punk or noise rock. I'm going back to hardcore, where you faced real threats. You had people like John Macias, who was the singer for this band Circle One, who was shot dead on the Santa Monica Boardwalk by the cops. He was probably the toughest person I have ever met. I mean, he was punching out LA cops in LA in 1983 when Daryl Gates was Chief of the LAPD and cops were just shooting people all the time. And ultimately, he himself was eventually shot by a cop while he was having what we would now call a bipolar episode, preaching the gospel; which amounted to him throwing people off the pier – and the cops did what cops do in America and they shot him."

I'd expected to be discouraged after talking to Eugene. When you've spent your entire life indolently going to seed, you can feel dismay after speaking to someone who has done the exact opposite. But I don't. I feel cautiously inspired. I decide to go to the gym. It's raining outside though so I look for my Oyster card. The vigorous city walking can start tomorrow.

(Thumbnail photo by Gregg O'Connell via)

John Doran's MENK column for VICE was reworked into the acclaimed memoir, Jolly Lad, which was published this year by Strange Attractor.

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