Couple more runs, I can skip my daily 1 Million squats

My wife inspired this entry. She is preparing for a ski trip, exercising a lot, running, lifting weights, etc. She is a beginner skiier, and will be taking classes and learning how cool skiing can be.

I, on the other hand, am an expert skiier. I was too young to remember, but by reconstructing bits and pieces of information I have gathered over the years from eaves dropping on conversations, I think it went down like this: when I was a toddler, I took my first steps in the fall, and that winter my father had me on skis.  You know when you go skiing, and you’re really proud because you finally learned to take wide turns without using the snowplow, and in about six years you might be able to do it parallel, but the point is you’re making progess, and then some little five year old whips by at the speed of light and giggles evily just before he launches himself into the air and effortlessly sticks the landing? That was me. At least, that was me if the complaints of my parents’ friends are to be believed. I’ve gotten better since then.

But now I’ll be skiing with my wife, who is just starting out. So, in order to make sure we are more on the same level, I decided to try something new: Tele-skiing. This is a style of skiing where your heels are not attached to the ski. As a result, you turn by basically doing lunges down the hill. It’s very graceful. The other benefit is that you get 2 reasons to feel superior at the end of the day when everyone gathers at the lodge and complains about how this skiing thing is making them ache in places they didn’t know they had body parts: (1) your boots are actually pretty comfortable, so you can walk around without looking like you got hit by a bus and (2) you did lunges all day, so (assuming you can still walk) you can brag about what great shape you’re in.

But enough talk. Here’s a good youtube video that shows you why I decided to title this entry “Thighs of steel.”

Click here to see where I got the above photo from.

1) After Three Days, Luxury Hotels Are Bad. Try to stay at second tier hotels. Hyatt and Renaissance and Sheraton are totally luxurious, which is good for a vacation or if you have to impress clients or for a business trip that lasts less than three days. At first, you might thinks it’s great.  They have little mints on the beds, and form-fitting mattresses designed by NASA, and trance music playing in the lobby, and elegant looking bartenders with difficult to pronounce names.

That’s all wonderful the first two or three times you stay there, but after a while it gets old. Instead, choose the second tier chains. Sheraton, for example, has Four Courts. True, at the Four Courts, there’s no trance music, so you don’t feel like a VIP at the latest South Beach Club like you would at the lobby of the Downtown Sheraton. But there’s enough light in the lobby that you can actually read your bill.  And you can pronounce the bar tender’s name, which is more important than you might think, depending on how jet lag effects you.

2) Speaking of which, blame everything on jet lag. The great thing about jet lag is that most people have experienced it at least once in their lives, so they believe you when you say it’s effecting your thought process.  But nobody experiences it the same way. People feel really uncomfortable telling you that you’re more full of it when you claim jet lag. It’s so difficult to define, you’ll not even be sure yourself whether your boneheaded moves are jet lag or just your natural boneheaded proclivities.

Are you late for a meeting? Jet Lag. Did you laugh at the client when he told you his golf handicap? Jet Lag. Did you get elected Governor of South Carolina, and then go to Argentina to visit a secret lover while telling your staff were hiking in the Appalachian mountains during the week known to be nude hiking week? Jet lag.

3) Watch documentaries about prison gangs before you travel for exercise tips. You may be planning on hitting the hotel gym when you travel. And if you are staying at the top tier hotels, those gyms tend to be really nice. But eventually you’ll get sick of carting around dirty gym clothes in that little extra pocket on the outside of your suitcase.  There’s also the jet lag factor, which will cause you to rationalize thusly for three weeks in a row: “I’m tired. I’ll just hit the gym twice as hard tomorrow.”

I just happened to catch a couple of documentaries of prisoners while I was on the road. Think about it. These guys are trapped in a small room for weeks, months, or years at a time (sound familiar)?  Personally, if I had stolen a T.V. or beat up a cop, and been stuck into a small room as punishment, I would probably not do a lot of exercising. I would spend a lot of time thinking “what the hell was I thinking? Maybe it was jet leg. I wonder if there’s precedent for a jet lag defense. I better check California case law the next time they let me use the prison library.”

But that’s not how the guys on these prison documentaries think.  They think along these lines: “that guard (or prisoner, or prison library employee) is really pissing me off. I’m going to do 300 fingertip push-ups every day for the next three months until I can puncture an armored truck with my pinky. Then I’m going to beat up that guard (or prisoner, or prison library employee), which in turn will make my life better.”

So, with nothing to do all day except get into fighting shape, they figure out some really good exercises that can keep you in shape despite the fact you are trapped in a small room most of the time. Business travelers can really benefit from this knowledge. So can Aerobics instructors.

4) Don’t chug a pint of beer just before your flight boards unless you are in an aisle seat. I’m just sayin’…

5) Don’t mess with flight attendants. Smile at them a lot, but not enough to creep them out. Make eye contact, but not long enough to challenge their authority.  My mother was a flight attendant. My wife is a flight attendant. I know how flight attendants think (see point number three, above).

People tend to forget how tough flight attendants are. You and I get cranky and short tempered after a few hours on a flight. The seasoned travelers can make it to, perhaps, four hours before they start questioning their sanity. But flight attendants are on your flight, and then – while you are rushing to your hotel, hoping against hope free internet services are provided (the top tiered hotels don’t, by the way, provide free internet), they hop back on the plane and work the return flight.  And then they get up the next day and do it again.

And there’s the little thing about if something goes wrong, they are the ones who are supposed to save everything. So, they have that to worry about.  And they handle it like it’s nothing.

So, flight attendants are tough. And spending all that time dealing with us whiners means they know how to get revenge. For example, the next time you are sitting in the aisle, and the flight attendant starts giving a bunch of free beers to the guys next to you in the middle and aisle seats, you’ll know it’s time to apologize for not smiling enough at the flight crew.

I was Trying to Avoid a Squirrel

I thought I would write about Larry O’Donnell, my roommate during my first freshman year in college (that’s not his real name). I went to a college that required us to live on campus for the first year (unless you’re a local and your family lives in town).

So, Larry O’Donnell was a local, but he decided to live on campus, to get the full college experience. And he already had a reputation. He wanted to be an extreme skier (I went to college near a ski town. Yes, I live in Miami, but I am a good skiier. I’m full of interesting contradictions. Just ask my wife).

So Larry’s ambition was to earn a living by skiing of cliff tops, and down glaciers, and make money by filming it and making movies and distributing the movies to various outlets for other crazy people. This was before Jackass, which basically raised the bar so high for making money from this kind of behavior that you can only make a living from it by – strange as it sounds – by being a complete jackass.

But this was before the success of Jackass, so even though Larry was only half jackass, he was, I think, well on his way to achieving his dream of being an extreme skier. Or of being something extreme. His niche was to only halfway succeed, so he might have paved a new path for people in this industry.

I say he was already well on his way because, on the first day I moved in, he mentioned that he had tried to jump the highway on his skis, and eventually succeeded, but on the first try, he missed. Being normal (in comparison), I naturally didn’t believe him. He was well prepared for people not believing him, and he happened to have a tape of the attempt, which he popped into the machine. Sure enough, there he was on the top of a hill which overlooked the highway.

He skied down the hill (in a tuck, no less), went of a rickety ramp that had probably taken three minutes to build, and flew most of the way over the highway. He landed on the furthest lane, bounced, and, fortunately, had enough momentum to go hurling off the other side into the hill below, barely avoiding the oncoming Mac truck. The camera man, a fellow “extreme skier,” who I would meet a few months later, was laughing so hard it was difficult to watch Larry tumbling down the far hill without getting motion sickness. But he eventually came to a stop.

At this point, Larry stopped the tape to point out that “that really hurt.” I nodded in agreement as he started up the tape again, to show the second try, in which he got all the way over the highway and landed successfully. He explained that the angle of the ramp on the first try was to steep, which had blunted his momentum. He also wondered out loud why people never seemed as interested in the successful jump as the failed attempt. I answered by asking if I would watch the failed attempt again.

Then, there was his habit of climbing in through the window instead of using the front door. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that our dorm room was on the fourth floor. So, on the day’s he didn’t have books with him, or something else to prevent a good climb, he would take the window. He got pretty good at climbing, until one day, when he was trying to open the window wide enough to slip in, and he lost his balance, and fell backwards to the ground. That would simply be another “don’t be a jackass” story, except that there were a few staff offices on the second floor below.

The Director of the dorm looked out her window just in time to see Larry float past her window with, as she later described it (and at first I thought she was just embellishing the story, but now that I reflect on it, knowing Larry, it was true) an expression like “hey, have you seen my keys?” She poked her head out the window to follow his descent, and watched as he bounced off the bike rack below, and lay on the ground, moaning.

In the aftermath of these types of failed attempts at extreme sports, I would rush up to him to see if he was okay. The conversation usually went something like this:

“Are you okay? Can you wiggle your toes?” I would ask, rushing to him.

“That really hurt, man.”

“I should think so.”

“Do you think these chicks staring at us want to talk to me?”

Larry had some trouble with “chicks,” because of his extreme nature. The first and only woman I ever saw him successfully pick up was a girl at the skating rink. She was standing on the other side of the glass, talking to a friend, when he came hurling towards her (apparently he had never been on ice skates until then, although he informed me “the principles of physics are the same as being on a skate board.”) and slammed into the wall, and smacked his head into the glass hard enough that the girl let out a squeak of fear.

She rushed onto the ice, coming to his side. He was so stunned by the impact that his normal extreme fear of women didn’t surface, and instead of stuttering and making rude comments, he actually seemed charming in a “owe, that hurts, could you hold me?” kind of way. But any relationship based on one party being only half conscious is doomed to failure. I was there when he called her, and he had a weird look on his face when he hung up.

“How did it go?”

“She said if I called her again, she would call the campus police.”

Larry spent a lot of time attracting – and then repelling – women who were fascinated by his… Larryness.

For example, the party we went to where he knocked himself out by accidentally bashing his head into the ceiling. It was a hip-hop house party. He started dancing, and got into a trance, into the zone that only Larry can get into.

Everyone stopped dancing and formed a circle around him. They were fascinated by his wild gyrations. He was bouncing up and down. He moved his hips in wide circles. His shoulders did painful looking jerking motions. It was quite amazing, especially since his eyes were closed and he kept coming really close to the coffee table but never actually stepped on it. A couple brave women tried to dance with him, but he ran into the back of one, sending her flying, and hit the other in the shoulder (she ducked out before it became her face).

But he didn’t notice. He was Larry, the music was good, and he was in the zone. Then, he started jumping to the rhythm of the song. Swing left, swing right, and jump. Then again, then again, each time jumping higher. The crowd was cheering each jump, although I doubt he heard us. Then, he jumped high enough that he hit his head on the ceiling. The ceiling was concrete. He bashed into it so hard, that he was unconscious before he hit the floor. There he was, just lying unconscious.

The crowd stopped cheering. Some people laughed. We all looked at each other. He hadn’t made any friends, because as soon as we entered the party he had made a b-line for the living room (which was serving as the dance floor) and started dancing. So the crowd just stepped over him, and everyone went back to dancing. I prodded him, slightly worried but not THAT worried because, after all, it was Larry. He woke up, put his hand to his head, and walked off. I saw him the next morning playing speed chess (badly) on the computer. “The nurse said I probably got a concussion last night. Man, what a party.” I had to put up with his alarm going off every three hours because he had read somewhere that you aren’t supposed to sleep for too long when you have a concussion.

“Why don’t you go to the doctor?”

“The emergency room nurses know me pretty well. I don’t want to bother the doctor with minor stuff.”

Then there was the time he was on his bike, and grabbed onto the back of a car that went onto the highway, with him hold onto it (like a jackass). Or when he built a home made bungee chord, and hung it from a large tree in the courtyard. The tree branch broke on the second try, and he smacked right into the ground.

“I should have chosen a stronger branch,” he explained to me.

But he also was an aspiring engineer. He built a contraption that was hooked up to three car batteries, and asked me if I wanted to watch him vaporize a steel wire. I told him no, but he took that as a yes, put on a heavy smock and protective goggles (he didn’t offer me any), and pressed the two cables together. The wire was vaporized, but it also blew out the window. “That will make it easier to climb through.” He said, lamely.

He built a hydraulic system for his bed. It would automatically raise to the ceiling, so it would be out of the way when not in use. The second woman I ever saw (briefly) show interest in him sat on the bed.

“I heard that you do wild things on here,” she said. But Larry, being Larry, didn’t get the double entendre.

“Yeah, check it out,” he said, and rushed to the other side of the room to throw the lever. The bed shot up to the ceiling, with the poor woman, shrieking, stuck on the bed for the launch towards the ceiling. Fortunately for her, he had built it with about ten inches between the bed and the ceiling. By lying flat, she was able to avoid being squished.

But Larry had hit the lever with such enthusiasm that the bed kept pumping up, falling a few feet, pumping up, falling, all the while the woman screaming “stop it, let me off here. Stop this thing.” Finally, Larry grabbed a lead pipe (I’m not sure why he had a led pipe laying around, but he did) and used it to hammer away at the hose, which caused it to loose hydraulic pressure. The bed fell to the floor.

The woman sprang from the bed, straightened her dress, and ran out the room.

After that first freshman year, I saw him a few times. Last I heard, he was a recluse in the mountains, making iron sculptures. He makes more money, I heard, by charging people to watch him do the sculptures than from selling the sculptures themselves.

Well, that goes to show you, there is always someone interesting. And everyone’s got a niche in life.

Berlusconi, Prime Minster of Italy

I studied Spanish in College, which helpah-me with-ah the learning of-ah the Italian, but it’s slow going. Also, when I was in college, I visited Italy a bunch of times. Plus, I really dig the Italian Renaissance artists. So, I have more knowledge about Italy than the average person, but not as much as the average Italian expert.

Still, I have a lot of enthusiasm. Sometimes I tune into Italian Radio’s internet feed (and understand about every tenth word). Other times, I’ll raid my wife’s collection of old Italian movies, and watch it with my hand on the reverse button, trying to divine the meaning of phrases like “Ma vaffanculo, perche mi parli cosi!”

And I am fascinated by their politics. For example, I learned the above phrase by listening to the radio broadcast of Italian Pariament. Italians somehow run their country, and get things done, but I haven’t been able to figure out how they do it. This is partially due to my lack of Italian language skills, and partially due to my poor grasp of Italian culture. But by far the most fascinating aspect of Italy, at least at the moment, is Berlusconi, the Prime Minister. He’s the leader of the country, and somehow they let him get away with this:

This is the same guy who said he likes Obama because he has a nice tan(?!!?). I have a lot to learn about Italy.

The point of this entry is to tell you how much I dig Norman Rockwell. The story starts with a conversation I had last Friday afternoon. I called up the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, and had the following conversation about Norman Rockwell:

Her: Museum of Art, how can I help you?
Me: (voice almost cracking with excitement) When is Norman Rockwell coming?
Her: (laughing at me, but covering up with a fake cough) The Norman Rockwell exhibit starts on November 14th.
Me: (trying not to sound dissapointed) oh. Not till then?
Her: Yes. The Norman Rockwell exhibit will be from November 14th until February 13th.
Me: (giggling like a little boy) the exhibit is that long?!?!?!
Her: Yes
Me: Sorry, I’m kind of excited.
Her: I can tell
Me: (sheepishly) I’m a big fan

Yes that’s right. The prospect of a Norman Rockwell exhibit coming to town is enough to reduce me to an 8-year-old-boy-on-Christmas like giddiness.

If you’ve been snooping around this website, and if you’ve checked out my About page, you already know that I have an interest in illustration, drawing, and painting. You’ll also know that this website is part of my rediscovery of that interest.

In the process of launching this website and exploring that creative side I left behind all those years ago when I decided to study Political Science and Law instead of Creative Writing and Fantasy Illustration, I am also discovering those golden nuggets of nostalgia from the fog of my childhood. Those things that made me such an art/sci-fi/writing nerd to begin with. There are the fantasy illustrators: Larry Elmore, Frank Frazetta, Jeff Easley, etc. There are the Science Fiction writers: Isaac Asimov, Douglas Adams, Robert Aspryn, etc. And then there are the non fantasy/sci-fi influences.

The two shining examples are Norman Rockwell and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ll save Doyle for another day.

But let me back up and give you some context. Last Monday, I was experiencing my normal early morning hazy-brained, drive to work, reminding myself it would all be okay because coffee was awaiting me at the office, when the NPR announcer’s voice cut into my zen/hazy state of mind.

Something about Norman Rockwell.

What? Norman Rockwell? I focused my attention, trying to think 15 seconds into the past, to remember what the radio announcer had said while I was (day) dreaming of coffee. Nope. Nothing. Why couldn’t they said Norman Rockwell at the beginning of the ad? That way I would know to pay attention.

The answer is that this is NPR. They pride themselves in using a style that does not grap your attention. I realized I would have to wait until the ad came on again, and I would have to apy attention to every, single announcement that I heard, from the beginning, until I found out what was going on with Norman Rockwell.

As a result, I spent the entire week listening intently to every NPR commercial that came on the radio. As you can imagine, this is extremely difficult to do. All radio ads are painfull to begin with, but NPR makes it worse because they don’t actually run ads. If it were a normal radio station, they would try to hold your attention in some way. For example, if they want to advertise the upcoming monster truck show, they’ll have a bunch of revving engines and gravelly voices shouting at you (to make it exciting, of course).

Normal radio stations know they can’t make it interesting – it’s a radio ad – but they at least try.

NPR doesn’t even try. After all, it’s public radio. So, instead of “ads,” they run “announcements.” For example. this would be a typical announcement, which isn’t an ad, because they are simply announcing something that a “donor” is doing, not running an ad for someone who paid them for the advertising time: This Thursday, it’s a pleasant evening with Dodge Drivel, founder of the boring foundation. Come visit Mr. Drivel as he explains how to be really boring.

And if you have ever listened to NPR – even just a few seconds – you know about that monotone voice. If Robin Williams read the above announcement, at least there would be some peaks and valleys in his voice, and you might be able to make it throught the entire announcement. But not NPR. They don’t like inflections.

So it was painful, but Norman Rockwell is worth it. I listened to the announcements all week, to and from work. Finally, on Friday they reran the announcemt. It turns out the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art will be having a Norman Rockwell exhibit. The problem is that, this being NPR, I zoned out before they got to the part where they tell you when the exhibit will be. But I overcame that issue, because now we have the internet. So, when I got to the office, I looked up the museum’s phone number and called, resulting in the above conversation.

But that’s not the point. The point is that I really like Norman Rockwell as an artist. I get the impression a lot of people consider him a lightweight as an artist. They call him an illustrator, trying to say it in a way that makes it sound like an insult. But in the end, it’s really a question of what speaks to you. Mostly, paintings of dragons and warrior princesses speak to me. But Norman Rockwell paintings speak to me too. This would make sense, I supposed, because Norman Rockwell was not painting reality. He was painting an idealised version of reality.

That’s what happens when you are an illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post, and for the Boy Scouts, and for Life magazine. Later in his career he took on the racism question, and that was also impressive, but for different reasons.

 Plus, as this article expertely points out, he was a decent guy, aside from his art. I’m so excited, I think I’ll go pick up my brush and paints right now!

If you’ve ever listened to Science Friday on NPR, you can claim some geekiness.  But if you actually took the time to go to their website, you’re in the true geek – nay – the uber geek category.  If you think their videos about latest scientific investigations are more interesting that normal T.V., well… we have to come up with a new term. The interesting part for me comes at the end, when they show footage of immune response fighting bacteria in a living organism.  Better than wrestling. Better than the Oympics!

If you think Flora Lichtman’s narration is sexy and nerdy, or perhaps sexy because it’s nerdy, then I’ll split the cost of therapy with you.