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This is a profile I wrote for Skinnie Magazine on comedian Brad Williams.

“There’s a rule in comedy called ‘The Pink Elephant rule,’” says comedian Brad Williams. “If you have a pink elephant on stage, you have to talk about it. As soon as I walk up on stage, the audience’s first reaction is, ‘Shit. A little person!’ If I don’t talk about it, they’re going to be sitting back like, ‘Does he know [that he’s a little person]?’”
Williams’ comedy career unexpectedly began a few years ago when he and his friend went to see Carlos Mencia perform in Brea, Ca. During his set, Mencia told midget jokes and quickly noticed one side of the audience was eating it up, while the other, where Williams sat, was silent.
“He [Mencia] was like, ‘What? Is one of them here?’” Williams says. “He looks at me and goes, ‘Are you offended by this stuff?’ and I say ‘Hell no,’ keep going.”
Mencia brought Williams up on stage where they joked with each other and Williams busted out some impromptu breakdancing.
“And at …

This is a profile on The Garage Theatre I wrote for Long Beach Magazine. The text is below the photo.

As you head east on 7th, keep your eyes open as you cross Long Beach Blvd. On the right hand side of the street, when you see a sign that reads “The Garage Theatre” you’ve found the home of dedicated group of young theater artists looking to provide a brand of intimate theater that affects their audience instead of merely comforting them with the same Neil Simon play they’ve seen dozens of times already.
What would evolve into The Garage Theatre began simply enough as a two-night run of an original play back in 1996.
The location? You guessed it. Someone’s garage.
“It was just a silly play,” says Eric Hamme, artistic director of The Garage Theatre. “It was a lot of fun. That stuck in our head and when we transferred to Long Beach [State University], it was always there that we wanted to start a theater company, so we thought of ‘The Garage Theatre,’ because that’s where we really starte…

The following article of mine was published in Long Beach Magazine as the cover story from November 2005. The text of the article is below the photos.



I suspect like many others in sunny Southern California, my first exposure to a minor league hockey team came from the 1979 film “Slap Shot” starring Paul Newman as a bush-league coach of a team of misguided misfits.
My most recent exposure came courtesy of the Long Beach Ice Dogs as I caught their first outing of the year against the Las Vegas Wranglers.
It was great. It actually felt like it was the winter. The bleachers were packed and those in attendance were treated to non-stop action. There were hits. There was finesse. There were eccentric women yelling for death in between awkward dances to tunes like “Tootsie Roll.” A man sitting at the top of the bleachers made it clear that referee was not doing the best job possible and the man offered several helpful suggestions as to how the ref could improve his performance. 
The kids were r…

Originally appeared on www.thegarv.com. 
UFC Fight for the Troops marked the second time the UFC has produced a card to help raise funds and awareness for soldiers suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury, and is the third time they’ve held a card from a military base.
The first Fight for the Troops card in December 2008 was notable for being one of the more brutal events in recent history with Corey Hill’s sickening leg break, Ben Saunders kneeing a bio-dome on Brandon Wolff’s forehead, Steve Cantwell snapping Razak Al-Hassan’s arm, and Josh Koscheck’s particularly brutal KO of Yoshiyuki Yoshida.
The event is in the book and the judge has made his decision, so let’s go to the scorecard!
Bantamweight Fight Will Campuzano (8-3) vs. Chris Cariaso (10-2) The first two and a half rounds of the opening fight were close and followed a pattern of Cariaso pushing the action towards Campuzano, who would evade and successfully counter. Midway through the final round, the momentum finally swung Cariaso…

This is an article I wrote on IndyCar drivers Sam Hornish Jr. and Helio Castroneves for Brentwood Magazine. The text of the article is printed below.




Originally Published in Brentwood Magazine, December/January 2005
Have you heard the one about the Brazilian and the American who share the same goal of being the best IndyCar series driver in the world?
What do you get when you combine San Paulo, Brazil’s Helio Castroneves and Defiance, Ohio’s Sam Hornish Jr.? You come up with the current roster for Marlboro Team Penske, which is akin to being the New York Yankees of the Indy Racing League. Castroneves and Hornish Jr. may not win every race, however it would be to little surprise if between the two of them they did just that, but if any other driver has plans of winning a race, they’ll have to go through Team Marlboro Penske to get there.
In 2004, Hornish joined Team Marlboro Penske after IRL legend Gil de Ferran announced his retirement. If there was someone who could fill the vacancy lef…

Column originally appeared on www.thegarv.com
“Chick fight!” my friend yelled, standing up and pointing towards the tiny rectangle shaped window in the door leading out of Mr. Ezerins’ physical science class for the less-scientifically mined; i.e. the delinquents.
Mr. Ezerins thought the class was playing a prank on him and refused to budge from his beaker until half the class was pushing their way through the door for floor seats to the hair-clinging, torso-slinging, makeup-smearing brawl between a pair of skater girls. Mr. Ezerins then made the mistake that so many persons in an official capacity have made since then: he stopped the fight too soon.
That experience during freshman year was been my lone live encounter with female fighting until May 2006 when I was covered Total Combat 14 in Del Mar, CA. The eighth fight of the evening pitted Kellyn Huehn (1-2) against the debuting Crystal Harris. Nine minutes later (the women fought three, three minute rounds) and with welts …

This is a profile I wrote on UFC Middleweight Champion, Anderson Silva, for Skinnie Magazine. The text of the article is printed below.


Originally published in SKINNIE Magazine APRIL 2007
Anderson Silva is a killer. 
Anderson Silva is ruthless. 
Anderson Silva is vicious.
Current UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva is…none of the above. Say it ain’t so?
The Anderson Silva I encountered was all smiles while practicing some of his patented dance moves that fans have become accustomed to seeing after his fights…that was until he saw a skateboard sitting in the corner of warehouse where our interview was to occur. The southpaw quickly grabbed the board and embarked on what must be every promoters and manager’s nightmare: their star champion awkwardly skating around a warehouse and eventually crashing on the cement as the skateboard shot out from under his feet. Silva thought it was funny.
For those still living under a rock, mixed martial arts is quickly surpassing boxing to become the pr…

At UFC VI Oleg Taktarov took home the tournament win in an epic final match and Ken Shamrock defeated Dan Severn to win the UFC Superfight Championship, a title that would eventually become the UFC Heavyweight Title, but the legacy of UFC VI is that it was the Tank Abbott show. If UFC VI was nothing else, it was the night that the legend of Tank Abbott was born.
“Tank” Abbott (0-0) vs. John Matua (0-0) If you’d told the crowd in Casper, Wyoming that D. L. “Tank” Abbott, as announced by Michael Buffer, would end his career with a lousy 10-14 record, you’d be mocked the same way Tank mocked Matua after this twenty second fight stopped. In the fifteen years of fights since this event, this is still one of the most brutal KOs the UFC has ever seen. Matua, billed as six foot two and 400 pounds, was representing Hawaiian Bone Breaking as his martial art. I’ll believe the six foot two, but you can keep the 400lbs. and the bone-breaking. But hey, hype is hype, yes?
The fight starts, the two bu…

The enigma and the battle of the Matts. Those were the two main story lines taking up all the ink heading into UFC 98 – Evans vs. Machida.
If the UFC had their way, the main event for UFC 98 would’ve seen Rashad Evans defend his newly won light heavyweight crown against former undisputed champ, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, who was coming off a close decision win over Evans’ teammate Keith Jardine at UFC 96 – a fight which was immediately followed by a most excellent Evans and Jackson trash talk jam session.
Jackson, understandably, wanted a bit more time off between bouts, so Evans faced the undefeated Lyoto Machida instead. Though both entered into the title fight undefeated, it was Machida who was favored by most, if not all, of the odds makers.
Matt Serra and Matt Hughes were supposed to have faced off against one another long ago at a UFC back in the mid-late 70s. In hindsight, the multiple postponements helped turn a fight that was your run of the mill grudge match into a battle betwe…