David Race Bannon, Race Against Evil: My evaluation

[MichaelDescado]

Dear Samuel,

Thanks so much for sending me David Race Bannon’s book, Race Against Evil. True to my word, I’ve been reading it, and I can’t believe this load of horseshit got published as “non-fiction”. I’m still in the second chapter, and already there are a HOST of red flags.

Naw, **** that! These aren’t red flags. These are blaring movie-inspired cliché’s that only a comic book reading fifteen year old would believe. I mean, are you shitting me with this?!?

Anyway, I’m gonna post my criticisms here on bullshido so that everyone can benefit as I trudge my way through this maelstrom of fallacy.

Okay, right off the bat with the “Acknowledgements” on page xi, Bannon claims that after verbally “weaving and dodging” about a scar on his back, his ELEVEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER cries, “You work for the government. I know it!”

Uh huh, ‘cause that’s the assumption an eleven year old girl would make. And let’s not ignore the accusatory tone here, as if she’s all shocked and reluctant to believe that her loving daddy was a super spy in his former life.

Of course, Bannon backtracks immediately and has his daughter get Zen-perfect nonchalant by saying, “I figured it was something like that. Write a book.” Again, that’s inarguably characteristic to an eleven year old mindset. (Do I have to point out the sarcasm here?)

Oh, and in Chapter one, I love how this dipshit claims to have tortured to death a reputed child molester in a room at the Byron Hotel in London. EVEN IF Bannon could’ve physically subdued him without the sounds of a struggle alerting the other guests, I have a feeling that even MUFFLED screams of agony would’ve at least piqued the interest of the people next door.

“Uh, honey? Do you hear that?”

“Yeah, sweetheart, sounds like somebody put a cat in a blender. But it’s none of our business.”

Bannon never actually says that he sucker punched this guy unconscious, duct-taped his mouth, tied him to a chair or something and then tortured him to death. No, I’m just guessing that THAT’S how it would’ve been done in the unicorn saturated realm of wannabe dickcheesedom.

On a side note, I haven’t gotten to the part where Bannon delves into his relationship with Sidelle Rimbaud, but he describes her as, “a French DST agent whose smoldering beauty would probably have broken decency rules at the Moulin Rouge.”

Riiiight… We’ve all seen this guy’s mugshot, and he’s got as much of a chance of hooking up with a “smoldering beauty” as I have of winning a Biggest Dick contest in Nairobi.

And the icing on the cake of Chapter one is that Bannon claims to have VIDEOTAPED his torture and murder of that child molester in the Byron Hotel, the viewing of said tape prompting Bannon’s Interpol supervisor to whisper, “Cher ami, what have we done to you?”

“What you trained me to do!!!”

For fuck’s sake, NOBODY talks like this! Even IF Bannon boasted this John Rambo level of badassedness, the quiet shame of his superior indicates that Bannon was out of line, (and certainly a sociopath), which would’ve gotten him kicked out of Interpol and promptly arrested.

Moving on to Chapter two… this gets into my forte, which is Bannon’s martial training.

Let me just start by saying, HOGSHIT!!!

First of all, Hapikido sucks. It’s basically TaeKwonDo with some shitty Aiki-Jitsu wristlocks and hip throws. It’s certainly not the deadly “killing” art that Bannon makes it out to be, even in Korea.

Honestly, how do you train to kill somebody? Most legitimate Mixed Martial Artists on this site might, (and I mean MIGHT), know a few moves that could actually snap somebody’s neck. A cross-face standing guillotine could probably do it with enough force, and perhaps even a figure four neck dislocation from the mount, and certainly a rear naked choke if you held it long enough- but the execution of these techniques with the intent of a swift and instant death exists in the realm of academic debate only. Most people that get killed by “Martial Arts” die because they took a hard-as-**** blow to someplace vital… usually the head.

You can’t train to kill somebody because you can’t realistically “train” to kill somebody. Does that make sense? After all, what would you practice on? What would you use to perfect your technique? …Corpses?!?

**** this guy!

Samuel, you’ve already pointed out that the Korean Riot in Bannon’s book never took place, (at least, there’s no documentation for it), but I found the “stabbing” much more telling. According to Bannon, he was stabbed with a blade so long that it went through his torso, almost to skewering him, (the point of it was pushing against the skin of his stomach on the OTHER SIDE).


Okay, that might be possible with a sharp enough weapon thrust into a stationary target with an extreme amount of force. But you can’t tell me that the simple act of Bannon spinning around to face his attacker was enough to pull the weapon clear. Leverage alone would’ve wrenched the hilt from the stabber’s hand, NOT TO MENTION that if you deliver a blow that can penetrate two feet of muscle, organ and flesh, the knife doesn’t just slide right out.

When I was little, I was crawling around on my grandma’s carpet when one of her sewing needles jutting into my knee. It didn’t hurt all that much, but it took a pair of fucking pliers to pull it out. And that was just a needle that had penetrated perhaps a half an inch. Bannon is talking about a foot and a half (at least) of thick steel, and you know how Korean thugs can afford the BEST cutlery their country has to offer.

In terms of leverage, the hilt of the knife would’ve broken off before Bannon’s circular spin move would’ve drawn it free.

That’s as much as I’ve read so far, but I’ll end with another little tidbit that rings especially false to readers of this site.

After meeting a Korean youth outside the door of some school Bannon was trying to enter to find safety for a wounded old man, (trust me, you have to read this pig **** to understand), the kid punches a window out without hurting his hand.

Bannon asks, “How did you do that without seriously cutting yourself?”

“TaeKwonDo,” the youth replies with a shrug and a grin.

“Hapkido for me,” answers Bannon.

And then they start sucking each other off, as if the verbal proclamation of their respective styles has unequivocally earned each other’s admiration and trust.

First of all, punching glass out ain’t that hard. My friend Chad Wicker has a cousin that used to do it all the time to car windows. I personally witnessed this at a party in Greenville Mississippi when I was in my early twenties. I myself cracked a truck windshield from the inside BY TOTAL ACCIDENT one time when I was pretending to be thrown forward by the driver’s sudden stop at a red-light. Yes, you read that correctly, I spider-webbed a truck windshield with my elbow. And it didn’t even hurt.

Basically, all you have to do is pull back fast enough to limit contact with the surface. Again, I did it by accident.

But let’s not forget the metaphorical dick sucking that resulted from Bannon and his newfound Korean Short Round exchanging style dossiers.

“TaeKwonDo,” the youth replies with a shrug and a grin.

“Hapkido for me,” answers Bannon.

In the venue of country wide sport, TaeKwonDo is Korea’s bread and butter, Hapkido it’s uglier cousin, so is Bannon really insinuating that their shared martial interest is enough to cause an instant and unquestionable camaraderie?

“Oh, so you train TaeKwonDo/Hapkido… you must be a superbadass like everybody else on this continent… let’s buttfuck each other!”

I’ve never been to Korea, but when somebody starts a conversation by bragging that they train TaeKwonDo or Hapkido, I punch ‘em in the testicles.

It’s just something I do…

And so, Samuel, I will continue to meander my way through this apocalyptic assemblage of literary manure, periodically posting comments as I go, (so I won’t forget them).

Ironically, David Race Bannon isn’t a bad writer. His sentence structure is good, his “voice” is imaginative, and his plot structure (so far) flows smoothly. I have to admit that I’m somewhat jealous seeing how he’s published and I am not, but then, my “professional” writing is and always will be marketed as fiction, while this book is nothing more than a turd in sheep’s clothing.

Take care,
-Mike

[Sam Browning]

Thank you Mike, and on Monday, I'll find out and pm you the answer to the question you asked me.