I was having a Facebook discussion about the term “Orientals” as an inappropriate descriptor for human beings, but eventually things went awry as they often tend to, and then before we knew it, it was hijacked by the topic of martial arts Zubaz pants, and jokes about Rex Kwon Do. And whenever I hear about Rex Kwon Do, it makes me think about the farcical business model of overnight Tae Kwon Do schools that emerge out of nowhere, with oft-debatable credentials of those who run them.

I like to call them McDojos. Gimme money, and I’ll feed you bullshit and a black belt after you’ve paid enough.

I’ve endured my share of McDojos as a kid, and I’m fairly confident that two of the three places in which I “learned” martial arts were McDojos in their own right, with the third one actually having a very legit headmaster, although he taught in all of maybe a handful of classes while I was there. So maybe all three were McDojos, after all. Well shit.

Anyway, when I was still living up in Virginia, and still working for the newspaper where I started my graphic design career, I remember this one ad I made for a McDojo that stood out in particular, because out of all the McDojos I’ve ever seen in my life, none had, well, marketed in the paper in the first place, but had boasted as much bullshit as I’d ever seen in my entire life like this one did.

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