Fortune House
Alissa & I had a nice dinner at Fortune House (Chinese Food) in St. Paul last night. We had just spent the afternoon driving around Wyoming, Lino Lakes and Mahtomedi including a brief excursion into the park with our dog Meliora. Today is the last week of Beginner Puppy classes for schnoodle. Alissa is asleep on the loveseat and Mel is sitting next to me on the couch stretched out. It's a quiet morning for certain! We saw our friends Jason & Krista (who will be married in a few weeks) for an open-house bridal shower (we left before the storms of DOOM came rolling in), visited Alissa's parents (her mom is home from the hospital!) and even drove through Willernie after picking up coffee at the non-nutty Dunn Bros. drivethru.

We both actually watched the CBS debut of EliteXC last night before there was nothing good on TV. I don't believe it can be technically called the Network debut of MMA because IFL was on MyNetworkTV drawing microscopic ratings last year. However, it's definately the birth of a legitimate network putting Mixed Martial Arts on their primetime (albeit Saturday) schedule. It went majorly over and wasn't done until almost 40 minutes into the normal newstime slot. I can only imagine how elderly news viewers felt when they turned on their TVs and saw Kimbo Slice and that monstrosity that was James Thompson's ear! I feel that local CBS affiliates will be having angry letters pouring in. That said, I think it was a very successful show. There was a lot of interesting pieces: articulate, quiet Kimbo; Mauro's stream of UFC references; two Minnesota fighers; an amazing women's match; two TKO matches from Doctor stoppage and some good KOs. I am not 'shocked and distressed' at Kimbo headlining this event the way many in the MMA internet media are. Just like wrestling, the top draws are rarely the "best in-ring, technical performers". Instead, they are the strongest characters with the most compelling storylines. Honestly, MMA is not different. They did a lot of the right things such as acknowledging other MMA organizations (Hook-N-Shoot, UFC, Pride, WEC) in the manor of treating MMA as an international sport which is competed at many levels. They showcased a good woman's fight (including a girl from Circle Pines, MN who put up a heck of a battle with Gina) which is probably the largest viewing audience for a woman's MMA match in history. They did not have losers out of their stars such as Kimbo Slice and Robbie Lawler, but both performed in a way that suggested they could be beat. Yes - Kimbo didn't kill Thompson the way he beat Tank Abbott. However, it rocked me far more as a viewer to see the battle. And I felt EliteXC did a decent job of not blaming the doctor's when fighters uttered the magic words. If you tell a commission doctor that you "can't see", it's well-understood that is MMA-speak for "stop the match but I'm not throwing in the towel". If fighters still don't understand that, it's their own fault because that's general knowledge. The fights & pre-match pieces were good. The music was dreadful. The post-match interviews were sloppy. Show gets a solid B.