Radical Roll-a-Thon

Valuing things greatly

Wrote once that our friends reflect some part of us. It’s why friendship exists. I’m honored that we have such amazing people in our lives that see something of themselves in us and vice versa.

In three days, on January 7th, 2017, Radical MMA is having a Roll-a-thon fund-raiser for Alison, which they planned – as with the others – wholly as a surprise for us. The way it works is as follows:

Participants find sponsors (family, friends, companies, brands, etc) that donate per hour of roll. Each participant will start rolling for as long as they can, starting at 10AM.

For example, if Mariko has five sponsors donating $10 per an hour and ends up rolling for four hours, then she raises $200 for Alison.

You can click our YouCaring link to sponsor any one of the people below:

Mariko and Rene Dreifuss
Rene is the owner of the gym, my dear friend, and my instructor; Mariko is his talented wife who designs all the cool images for these fundraisers. If you’re at all interested in starting something new and (very) physically and mentally challenging, consider signing up at Radical MMA and supporting these two lovely people, who spend so much time supporting Alison and me. As an added bonus, you can always watch Rene abuse me on the mats, which he does with alarming regularity.

Alesya Yelisow
She ran in the Tough Mudder last year with the others for Alison. I always feel bad for the guy that thinks he’ll take it easy on her because she’s a girl. Then again, it’s very entertaining.

Balaji Sudhakar Subramani
It’s a good thing he’s part of the gym, because when he and I are both there, I think that Rene is torn as to whom to abuse, which gives me a 50/50 shot at a reprieve from something called The Japanese.

Chad Hernandez
He’s my other main coach in the gym and the guy in this picture. We call him “Damn Chad” because, he’s so good that, at some point rolling with him, you’ll inevitably say “Damn, Chad – what just happened?”

Donald Trainor and Drew Cotton
I put them together because they both had their own personal fundraisers for Alison, for which I am very grateful, and because my relationship with each of them is much like the video below, but with less explosives and more choking.

Elizabeth Harney
Liz isn’t rolling because of work, but not for lack of trying. She was the one that organized the Tough Mudder for Alison, which meant so much to us. An artist by trade – she has some work in a show this Sunday – I told her that most of my legal clients were artists; obviously, she has a lawyer for life.

Jeff Bagby

Jeff is another 40-something but he’s much, much, much better than I. He was one of the first people that I spoke to about Alison. He got me in touch with a survivor of brain cancer, which was a lifeline at the time as that was some hope when we needed it the most.

Joshua Martinez
A chef by trade, he also ran in the Tough Mudder for Alison and first turned me on to the wonders of turmeric. If it wasn’t for our current situation, I’m fairly certain I’d be irritating him by showing up where he works for food.

Laura N. Benítez
Laura used to work around the corner from my pad. I told her that we would grab coffee before/after class one day but then she up and moved to California for a new adventure. Ah, to be young and carefree and studying how to choke people. I’m glad she’s back if only for a bit and to roll for Alison.

Max Kuba
He’s a fellow tech that also happens to be the gym’s unofficial dietitian. When Alison dropped to her lowest weight, he gave me some invaluable ideas to get her stable. I still consult with him now for eating tips and terrible puns.

Megan Frazier
She’s one of the people in our gym that I think might go pro one of these days. Looking forward to that and being her agent. I expect the standard 10%.

Miguel Belmonte
Miguel is the other 40-something in a school of 20-somethings. While he’s an actor from Spain, I believe we think the exact same thing every time we leave the mat: “Man, this is gonna hurt tomorrow.”

Mike Robinson
He was actually a student at my fencing class but, with a background in wrasslin, told him Radical might be a better fit. Years later, he’s much better than I. How I hate him.

Robert Haffeman
Half-man is one of the top athletes in our gym. He’s also ridiculously tall, handsome, kind, and intelligent with a wife who’s beautiful both inside and outside. How I hate him as well.

Roger Song
A fellow Cornell-grad who prevents me from saying that I’m the best Cornell grad fighter there.

Roslyn Lo
My cousin, whom I love and am very proud of for being the badass she is. I resent that she is younger, arguably stronger, and more attractive than me.

Sawyer Speilberg
Is an actor and one of main training partners. I think he could be a pretty good fighter if he devoted himself to it but I won’t encourage him because his mom, an actress herself (who was in a small film back in the day) sent Alison $5,000 for the Tough Mudder and I think she’d be mad at me if I did.

Simon Ying
We took a train together once and he stayed on well past his stop to tell me more about the woman he was dating at the time. Wasn’t too surprised when they got hitched: You wanna marry someone who forgets to get off a train because he’s telling someone else how great you are.

Sohail Mathur
Is an example of a small world; he actually knew my cousin Roslyn even before he started there. I don’t see much of him but am touched he still volunteered for this.

Yu Ji
As irritated as I am with Half-Man, it’s doubly true for Ji as he’s all those things and Chinese. Here’s him being taller and younger than me at ComicCon a few years back.

Finally a quick thanks to Henry Cho, and Jonathan Chan who can’t roll but have already agreed to sponsor others, and Philip Chen, whom I told you about previously. I just heard that Farouk Araki, whom I don’t know very well, is also rolling for Alison – and that’s why this is so cool. People helping others just because…

The kindest thing you can do for someone is to value greatly what they value greatly. I value nothing greater than Alison and the kid.

Damn, I hope someone takes video. This is cool.

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Location: home, wondering if I should see the doc about my back
Mood: touched
Music: when I think that I’m alone it seems there’s more of us

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