PapaSeanski

“The Glow” is a mythical state of pure awesomeness that is attained when you reach the pinnacle of your field of study, preferably Kung Fu. The glow gives you supernatural powers that allow you do defeat B-movie villains with the ease and comfort of a lazy boy chair. Your body will glow bright colors while corny theme music plays in the background, further humiliating your arch enemy.

Achieving the glow is no easy task. Up till now, only two people have attained this state of consciousness, Bruce Lee and Bruce Leeroy. But don’t worry; we will break down exactly what it takes to get the glow.

Photo by Tom@HK

Change your first name to Bruce. As I said before, only two people have reached the final level of hotness, and they were both named Bruce. If you want to maximize your chances of getting the glow, you should keep with tradition and stick with the name Bruce. If that name really bothers you, then you will have to make up some hot Kung Fu sounding name that is worthy enough of having the glow. Any derivative of Bruce Lee will work. If not, use your own name and choose a random animal for your last name that starts with the same letter.

Like…Peter Panda
Larry Llama
Tommy Tiger

Remember. You aren’t reinventing yourself. You are just letting the world know that you have vast reserves of hotness stored inside you, waiting to be tapped.

Have random arrows shot at you while training. It is not enough just to train furiously for years until you exhaust all your master’s tips and tricks. Random arrows must be shot at you while you practice your field of study. Whether you are painting, figure skating, or building a bridge, you must skillfully weave out of the way of random deadly arrows and karate chop them in half as they whizz by you. Why? Because it looks hot.

Photo by LondonBrad

Watch movie clips of Bruce Lee to achieve greatness. It has been scientifically documented that watching Bruce Lee movies will transfer photons of hotness to you through osmosis. Bruce Lee movies have an unlimited amount of awesomeness packed into each frame. So, in order to keep the universe in equilibrium, high concentrations of awesomeness must diffuse to areas of lower concentrations of awesomeness (i.e. anything that is not Bruce Lee). Make it your duty to find these clips, and soak in the hotness that radiates from these classics like Bruce Leeroy did.

Let’s follow Bruce Leeroy’s timeline.

In 1964, Bruce Leeroy was born.

In 1968, Bruce Leeroy saw his idol, Bruce Lee. “My Interest in martial arts began at the age of four while watching Kato [Bruce Lee] on television in ‘The Green Hornet’” - Taimak aka Bruce Leeroy

In 1985, Bruce Leeroy achieves the coveted ‘glow’ while defeating Sho’nuff.

So basically,

Born on whatever date —–> Watch Bruce Lee ——> Acquire glow.

Photo by Anahita

Find an arch enemy. Tell me that little kid isn’t looking for his first arch enemy! TELL ME!!!

After years of training for your goal learning a new language, writing a book, or hosting your own TV show, you need someone to jump kick in the end. No journey is complete until you pulverize someone’s chest with your foot. Don’t pretend like there is a shortage of villains in your town. You can find your nemesis at the local DMV, because all evil villains have to drive. You can also check in the frozen food section of the supermarket, where all the cold-hearted dirtbags hang out.

However, you can’t just defeat any old enemy that walks out your grandma’s bingo game. That wouldn’t be hot. You need you give your enemy a title that will instill terror through nursing homes across the world like….

Sho’nuff, the Shogun of Harlem.
Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds.
Pierre, the French Tickler.
Gargamel, the Smurf Slayer.

Find an Asian master that speaks only in proverbs. Yes. He or she must be Asian, because that’s the unfailing Hollywood formula. Your master must constantly drop nuggets of knowledge on you, and speak in cryptic, fortune cookie, sentences that must be deciphered by you while performing a meaningless task. Communicating to you in haiku would also be acceptable.

For example, Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid was a great master.

Van Damme had Xian Chow in Kickboxer.

Mr. Miyagi is another great one. Yes, I said Mr. Miyagi twice because anyone who can teach Ralph Macchio to fight deserves a double mention.

Also, if you are Asian, you can’t have an Asian master train you. In case Hollywood makes a movie, you must overcome some kind of racial tension on the way to glowing nirvana. The best example of this is the movie Cool Runnings where a Jamaican bobsled team was trained by champion Caucasian, John Candy.

When you see Benjamin Franklin holding a New York Giants football jersey, you know something special happened.

The Giants won Superbowl XLII.

No one believed they could pull off the win. The whole world wrote them off like a big tax deduction. Before the game, the New York Giants were thought of nothing more than Giant speed bumps for their undefeated opponent, the New England Patriots.

What actually happened on Sunday shocked the world. I remember watching the game, and watching the Giants slowly march up the field on offense for a field goal. You could see the Giants actually believed they were going to win. The running backs were carrying defenders on their backs. The receivers were making plays that eluded them in the beginning of the season. And the Giant defense played like savages, savage superheroes. They all came to play.

I remember the score at halftime being 7 to 3, Patriots lead. Even though the Giants were behind in score, the Giants were dominating. I’ve never seen them play like that. I could only think,

“These guys might actually pull this off.”

Watching the game was surreal. I was jumping around the TV yelling and screaming. With the window open, you could hear the rest of New York watching the game, banging on walls, and yelling not so great things about the Patriots. You have to love New Yorker’s choice of words. Just use your imagination.

I didn’t remember all this fuss when the Giants were in the Superbowl seven years earlier. Everybody was watching this game, even people who never watch football at all. I think everyone was able to relate to the Giants. At some point in your life the world said

you are a Giant underdog
you are supposed to fail
you are supposed to back down
you are a Giant loser

The Giants showed us that it doesn’t have to go down like that. Their last drive for the winning touchdown was not supposed to happen, but the Giants showed us that words like

impossible
unbeatable
unstoppable

are just words. The impossible is possible.

The Giants showed the world what is possible, not only for their football season, but for our lives as well.

Now I see more than ever that it is possible to change and improve myself. It is possible to get what you want in life.

You just need

A Giant heart. You can’t measure heart. You can’t touch it. You can’t buy it either. But you know when someone has heart. I know the Giants have it. They had the determination to fulfill their destiny. You can be phenomenal athlete, or a gifted writer, but physical prowess and intellect only take you so far. Passion and determination is what puts you over the top.

A Giant dream. The Giants knew exactly what they had to do to accomplish their dream. If you expect to accomplish yours, you have to know what you want. Determination without direction is a recipe for disaster. However, it is not enough to just know your mission. Be your mission. Be your dream. Everyday.

A Giant team. Every single player on the Giants had the same dream of winning the Superbowl, but each player could not have accomplished that by themselves. It took a Giant team to win. You may think you don’t need a team to accomplish an individual goal like writing a book or learning a new language, but nothing could be further from the truth. You need to surround yourself with people that have similar goals in order to accomplish yours. Everyone starts out as a rookie in life. It is up to you to find life’s veterans and absorb their wisdom.

I finished the Hulk t-shirt, and now I will show you how I made it.

Materials I used.

1 white t-shirt
1 black t-shirt
Acrylic craft paint, mainly just green and purple
Green, black, and purple magic markers
1 sharpened No. 2 pencil
1 wooden board
Some Hulk comic books for Inspiration
Strong tape
And 1 grandmother that knows how to cut and sow fabric

The first part is simple enough. I put the white t-shirt on a flat board as if the board was wearing the shirt. It doesn’t matter if you want to paint on the front of the shirt or the back. Make sure you iron out any wrinkles, and remove any lint from the side you paint on. Then I taped arms of the shirt, and other loose areas to the other side of the board, so the shirt won’t move around when I paint.

I started to sketch out in pencil the figure of the Hulk unto the shirt. I used a picture from an old comic to copy from. An old comic book image is good, because the drawing style in those days was simple. I don’t like the digital rendering of comics these days. The images get so complex, it’s like you aren’t reading a comic book anymore. Anyways, I tried not to make really dark lines or shadows, because I didn’t want the pencil to show through the paint. That may not matter depending on how thick your paint is. I watered down my paint to the consistency of watercolor so it was really thin. Experiment, and find what works best for you.

Here I started to fill in the sketch with paint. Remember that acrylic paint is water based. You have to be mindful of what materials you work with, because as you can see, the paint bleeds a little. That meant I had to paint a little inside the lines of the sketch, and give the paint room to spread. If the paint spreads too much, don’t worry about it. You can always paint over it, or hide it with shadows or highlights later on.

Even though the Hulk is just green, you can use other colors to make different effects. For example, you don’t always have to use black to make shadows. I was mixing green with other hues of green and even blue, to make a darker color. Brown can be a good substitute for black too. I used pink to highlight the purple pants.

Sure there is a lot of technique to be learned in painting, but it is important not to confine yourself to rules from an art textbook. Use whatever materials you have in your home to make the effect you want. I decided to use permanent markers to accentuate the shadows around the waist area of the pants. After the marker dried, I would paint over the marker to make it look like the pants were in front of the shadows at the waist.

Since I was already painting on a white shirt, I choose to use the whiteness of the shirt as highlights on the arm and face. That is something you have to decide before you paint anything for obvious reasons. That is totally up to you though. I could have used white paint, or even office white out to give Hulk some nice, cavity free, teeth.

At the end, I painted thin blue horizontal lines for the background. I guess I could have done something more appealing to the eye. Maybe next time.

When I finished, I could have cut the Hulk out and framed the fabric I painted on. Instead, I decided to have my grandmother cut the painting out and sow it unto a black shirt. She sowed the outer edges of the rectangle as well as around the Hulk silhouette, keeping the Hulk flat against the black shirt. I didn’t see her do it, but she did a great job! Thanks Grandma! If your grandmother doesn’t sow, you can always get your local tailor to do it.