Friday, February 23, 2007

Mama said knock you out!

Wow, it’s been so long since I’ve posted to my blog that I doubt anyone will even read this. Nevertheless, I’m going to try and start posting again. After being shown up by my wife and little sister, I’ve decided that I’m a pretty pathetic excuse for an aspiring writer. How do I ever expect to finish a screenplay or novel if I can’t even make an occasion blog post? Depressing ☹

Okay that’s out of my system. On to other things that are bothering me—number one on my list for today: knocking people unconscious. Why don’t I know how to do this? According to television and movies, this should be relatively easy to do, but I’m not sure how. Evidently, it involves a good blow to the head. Blows to the head are something I have a lot of personal experience with, yet I must be missing something as I’ve never been knocked unconscious or knocked someone else unconscious.

In the movies, anyone and everyone seems to know how to do this in a manner that not only effectively incapacitates the desired target for several hours, but also does no permanent damage other than perhaps a painful headache. In an episode of Prison Break I watched recently, four different people were knocked unconscious by three other people within the course of a 45 minute show. Of the four, all of them were conscious and fine within a matter of hours. Do I need to go to prison to learn this skill?

In a snowboarding crash, I once hit my head so hard that I lost three days of my memory (which could be a useful blow to master in and of itself) but I still never lost consciousness (or at least that's what witnesses tell me; I don't remember). I’ve had multiple concussions that left me extremely nauseated and dizzy for a couple of days, but again, I remained conscious through each one.

And it’s not just me. I’ve known several people who’ve experienced pretty severe head trauma without losing consciousness. Why is it that movie folk can take any blunt object and instantly incapacitate whomever they wish without causing them permanent damage or killing them? Seriously, think about this over the course of the next few movies and tv shows you watch. I can almost guarantee you’re going to see it. The two exceptions are Homer Simpson and Barney Gumble who are evidently very resistant to being knocked out by a blow to the head, but extremely susceptible to being knocked out by mass quantities of Duff.

The writers of these films and shows either need to come up with more creative ways of incapacitating people, or they need to call me up and explain how it’s done so that I can have that skill too. It’s only fair.

4 comments:

Megs said...

Man, that was great when you lost your memory for three days. I still tell that story.

Linda Winegar said...

Well, I on the other hand have been "knocked out" with a blow to the head. But that was due to the fact that I hadn't eaten breakfast yet and was under some serious stress, so when I fell to the ground and hit my head on the concrete I was knocked out. Although...I guess I was unconscious before I even hit the ground because I remember everything went black. So your theory remains unchallenged. I definitely would not want to be the guinea pig for this test. Yeah, Megs, tells this story all of the time, but it's sad for me because Clark kept asking if he was still dating me at the time. "Of course you were, you can't get rid of me by forgetting about me, it's not that easy." :)

Anonymous said...

Having talked to several full-contact fighters, it seems to takes one powerful punch and some serious luck to land the almighty knockout strike.

Frankly, my favorite knockout move is Captain Kirk's jujitsu chop to the neck. Classic!

Though, I have seen someone knocked out from a light tap to the neck. Apparently if you hit the vegas nerve just right, it puts a guy out cold.

Anonymous said...

Clark snowboards? Since when? Sounds like someone made up some facts about himself to better-fi his blog. Glad to see he got his sister and wife to buy into the lies too. The truth shall set you free Clark (ctm).