Madame Bovary

Posted in Reading with tags , , , , , , on October 10, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle

Time Magazine ranked the ten greatest novels of all time thus: 

  1.   Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  2.   Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Continue reading →

Shooting Star: 2010 K1 Oceania GP

Posted in Journalism, Kickboxing, Writing with tags , , , , , , , , , on October 10, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle

International Kickboxer Magazine, Vol. 18, No.4

The K1 World Grand Prix, the most prestigious international stand-up martial arts event, returned to the Oceania region on July 10 for the first time in seven years. Previously, the Oceania qualifier had been staged by Tarik Solak in Melbourne, Australia, and in Auckland, New Zealand, by Dixon McIver. Both promoters put their unique stamp on the event and set a high benchmark for every event to follow. Continue reading →

Nathan 'Carnage' Corbett: What's Next?

Posted in Journalism, Kickboxing with tags , , , , , , on October 10, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle

Post-sparring analysis after Carnage gave me a sound beating.

International Kickboxer magazine, Vol.18, No.4

The last time this magazine visited Nathan ‘Carnage’ Corbett, he was a month away from meeting a man roundly considered to be pound-for-pound the world’s best fighter, Tyrone Spong. After being knocked down in the second round, Nathan recovered from wobbly legs to down Spong with a spectacular right hook. Controversy set in quickly, however; Nathan failed to see the referee wave off the contest and thought the fight was still underway. Seeking to capitalise on what he believed to be no more than an eight-count, he punched Spong all the way into the middle of the week after. When the dust had settled, the fight had been ruled a no-contest. Continue reading →

Love Letter

Posted in Love letters, Writing with tags , , , , on October 8, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle

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I remember on Sex and the City how Carrie Bradshaw was a big reader of the love-letters of ‘great’ men; I was inspired by this notion at the time. I looked up some of the letters, Beethoven’s specifically and was, well, disappointed. Not that I am a ‘great’ man (no one other than me seems to think so, anyway,) but I have always felt that this letter was one of my better efforts.

It’s strange to think that all my writing, all that work, can boil down to one single effort, much like a sprinter’s entire training life can be boiled down to that sub-ten seconds he’s tearing along that hundred meter track. But I guess that’s the thing; ordinary lives find their extraordinary moments for that finite stretch of seconds, or words, or moments.

So here’s mine. The girl is long gone; I’m certainly the better for it. But I remember being transfixed by a sorrow so great it could only be described as grief, and here are the thousand-odd words I wrote in the hope of transfiguring it into something more than a squalid agony.       

Continue reading →

Rejection!

Posted in Writing with tags , , , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle

Dear Jarrod,

Thank you for sending me Finding Cronos, and for giving Murdoch Books the opportunity to consider publishing your manuscript. I think the questions and themes you wanted to explore through your story do have merit, however I think the writing and structure of your manuscript still needs more work. Continue reading →

Injury!

Posted in Kickboxing on October 5, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle

 

Some years ago, as a hopeful, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young kickboxer, I paid a visit to my physio. No doubt I had twisted/snapped/sprained something minor and needed some attention. I remember asking him while sitting on the table, “How dangerous is kickboxing, do you think, for my health?” Continue reading →

Intolerable Material Part 2

Posted in Film on October 1, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle


I seem to have this subject on the brain; it may have something to do with a series of particularly shocking cinematic episodes I have undergone in the last few months. I think it was kicked off when a friend of mine loaned me the Takeshi Miike film, Audition.  Continue reading →

Next Generation Megamass Forte

Posted in Kickboxing with tags , on September 23, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle

 

Charles Poliquin, legendary strength coach, wrote one of my favourite articles on training, entitled, “The Super-Accumulation Program: Overtrain, Rest and Grow!” Poliquin believes that by brutally overtraining, until your numbers actually go 20% to 40% in reverse, you can achieve spectacular gains after full recovery. I personally had the experience of being trained into the ground in The Netherlands; before that, I would have thought training that way was just crazy.

Continue reading →

Intolerable Material Part 1

Posted in Film with tags , , , , , , on September 17, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle

The Killer Inside Me [DVD]

I went and saw the film The Killer Inside Me’ during the week. It had received a very good review in The Age and, being one of those people who struggles to make up his own mind, I took that as a good enough reason to go see the film. I think I was also curious about the fact that it was an ‘old’ novel; set in the USA of the nineteen-fifties. It’s not often you a see a period-piece of this nature.  Continue reading →

Kurt Finlayson: Winning From the Inside Out

Posted in Journalism, Kickboxing with tags , , , , , on September 17, 2010 by Jarrod Boyle

For every fighter who ever sets foot in the ring, world champion is the fairest hope. Few can imagine that when the opportunity arrives, it will be granted in front of a home-town crowd. Kurt Finlayson takes Jarrod Boyle for a walk back along the long, hard road to a championship. Continue reading →