Not much riding this week. Yet. There's still hope though. The weather doesn't look terrible. If I can keep work from totally blowing up on me... it's a little hard for me to get going right now. Once again, I'm at the bottom of the mountain, this time with a crummy back. It's not a thrilling prospect. I suspect the only way to get going, is going to be getting going, and hoping the motivation and the joy finds me somewhere along the way.
It'd be a damn sight easier if it wasn't 45 degrees every day, and windy...
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Somebody somewhere is wondering, "what would happen if I ran a freight train into a tornado?" Well, somebody... wonder no more!
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Hey, check this out. Y'know Zdeno Chara, the oversized defenseman for the Boston Bruins? Turns out he's a total bike fiend, leaving bikes stashed around the world so he can go riding when the opportunity presents itself. He spends his summer vacations doing the hard climbs on the TdF. How big is he? 6'9", and at least 260 pounds in peak shape. And says his favorite ride in the world is the Col du Galibier. Amazing.
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Bill Strickland and Dave K. both write about the same thing today - riders whose ego gets the best of them, much to the amusement of everybody around them. Don't be that guy.
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Okay, math geek crap to follow.
I recently picked up a "how to do algebra" book because my math skills are getting rusty, and if Son of Rouleur is anything like me, he's going to have strong innate math ability, but will also prove to be in severe need a total kick-in-the-ass to get him to do the work to take advantage of his talent. Nobody kicked me in my ass until I was in engineering school, and Differential Equations kicked me so hard that I took a slight break of about 18 semesters before returning to college. The reason for it, besides the fact that I was polishing off a fifth of Two Fingers every night, was that my algebra ability was Teh Suxxor. I never had a very good teacher who could engage me, and because I could float through grade and high school on autopilot, I did. So by the time I was taking AP math in 11th grade and an advanced math theory class in 12th, I was one of the few students in the history of the world who could understand some pretty complex math yet still periodically fail a test based on simple figuring errors. So I want to remedy that while I'm getting prepared to handle Son of and his homework needs. I have forgotten just about everything I ever knew about math, mainly in retaliation for the engineering school debacle but also because if any of the other lawyers figure out I can do math my legal ability will immediately be suspect.
The book I chose had a pre-test in it. This included a lot of basic arithmetic, including my old foe, long division. Very, very complex long division. I always had the worst time trying to figure out how to guesstimate how many times the divisor goes into the dividend. It's time consuming, and frankly one never knows where to start when figuring out how many times 232 goes into 17650 or somesuch. Faced with a really grotty number - 635,745 divided by 173, out to three decimal points, a thought struck me. Rather than try to guess how many times 173 goes into 635 (and each successive remainder), why not knock out a quick times table and avoid the guessing? Because you're only working on one decimal place at a time, you never need to know more than 9 times 173 (and even if you needed 10 it's 1730). It only took a half minute to knock out a short times table for 173, just mentally adding 173 down the side of the page. 173, 346, 519, 692 and so forth. This made each division operation *way* easier. I knocked out the 6 digit answer in about 30 seconds after that. It made it *so* much easier and faster - no guesstimates, just look at the times table, put in the quotient, use the times table to provide the number from which you'll generate the remainder... I'm not explaining it well but I suspect the math & science geeks who frequent this blog know exactly what I'm talking about. It's like a logarithm for morons, which I am, generally.
Anyhow, it felt cool figuring out trick #1 for when the kid learns long division in a few years, but more important I enjoyed intuiting something that will be helpful for me when there's no calculator handy - and it will help me rebuild my shattered confidence in my math abilities. Just don't tell any of my lawyer friends I'm doing it. I'd hate to lose my street cred.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Stickin' It To The Man
If you thought the British press was tough on Tom Boonen, wait 'til you see what the British politicians do to that other Belgian, what's 'is name, who was recently selected to be the president of the European Union.
Now that's how you abuse a politician. Not saying I agree with it, just that I'm in awe of his technique.
Now that's how you abuse a politician. Not saying I agree with it, just that I'm in awe of his technique.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Friday Fun Time
Oh yes indeed, it's fun time.
It's been a decent week. Despite having the kind of workload this week that one normally doesn't see outside of a North Korean labor camp, I've had fun. Good things happened.
Over the weekend, I taught Son of Rouleur to shoot a BB gun. He had bugged me for about a month beforehand about getting a BB gun, and since I'm Second Amendment Positive, I agreed and we picked out a Daisy Buck, the smallest model available. Son of... is 6 and it's recommended for kids 10 and older, but that's just the products liability lawyers talking. 6 is fine, if your kid is mature enough, understands the safety rules, and has a shred of judgment. Son of... does, so home came the gun with a little trap, and a big jar of a few thousand BBs.
For about a week, I made him keep it around the house unloaded, and handle it. We learned about the safety, the trigger, the charging lever and the stock; we learned how to carry it safely, how to treat all guns as if they were loaded, and how to aim. Then there were the lessons about how you don't fool with people who play with guns, and if you find a gun laying around, don't touch but notify teacher, mommy and daddy, or a cop. Most of all we learned about the muzzle, not pointing that at anybody even inadvertently, and not shooting people or yourself. This involved checking out that how that big permanent wrinkle in daddy's index fingernail is from where a BB went through the finger and lodged under the nail. The doc, a friend of my dad's who was also a bigtime surgeon (when not big game hunting) had to pull the nail off with pliers. He could have done it with less pain, he said, but as an avid hunter, he told me that if I was man enough to do a damn fool thing like shoot my own finger, I was damn sure man enough to deal with having him pull the nail off with pliers and dig out the BB with a scalpel.
Son of absorbed the safety lessons for a week, and seemed to understand what it all meant. So last Saturday we whipped out the trap and target and set up a mini-range in the basement hallway. That's a cool thing about spring/air BB guns - they are mild enough to shoot indoors with little concern. I swathed the end of the hall with a matress pad, a blanket, and the pad from a chair, and set up the trap in front of that mess. I stood the boy about 7 feet away, instructed him to use the proper stance, and squeeze gently, keeping his eyes open. I expected him to shoot a tiny hole in the ceiling.
Damned if he didn't put a BB into the 10 ring.
So on Sunday we shot too, and a couple nights this week. Nothing major; we just take turns burning off 20 or 30 BBs at night, poking holes in targets. I can shoot alright and am doing my best to set a good example. Son of's shot groups are getting tighter, and he is enjoying both the challenge of shooting properly, and the discipline of it. It also helps that I've impressed on him that it's a grown-up thing, the first grown-up thing he's ever gotten to do. He enjoys that fact, and tries to measure up to what he perceives as responsible, grown up behavior. For my part, I'm enjoying passing on something my dad passed on to me, and something his dad did with him, ad infinitum.
Joy.
Other good things happened. I got out for a short ride yesterday with Beppo and Joaquin on the Haole Hauler, the Kona fixie cross bike which is turning into quite a damned beautiful bike with the wood fenders, Phil hub, brown leather saddle and tape and so forth. Yes, I've built a bike to meet my idea of what a bike oughtta look like, and it's ridiculously tasteful. "Looks like a magazine bike" is what one of my friends said about it. I promise I'll post some pictures soon.
I also read an amazing and inspiring story today that reminded me why I believe there is a God, not so much on a hoity-toity theological churchy level, but at a level of gut instinct and intuition. The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash - normally a moderately conservative political writer - went to Haiti with a Catholic priest whose mission in life is to help Haitians. What he saw in Haiti was terrible, almost unspeakable suffering. He also saw a surpassing love that cannot possibly come from one man's mind alone; it is inspired by something outside of us. In addition to being a compelling story, it's one of the best written articles I've read in years, and it probably deserves a Pulitzer nomination. Take 10 minutes and read the article. I promise you, you will not regret it.
Enough earnestness already. Time for the tunes. The theme for this week is mostly brainless.
I'm in a good mood so let's have a little Fatboy Slim. Dude's pretty unctuous but he turns out some good music. Brainless but good.
Here's some music that's semi-brained and good, a little Public Enemy. Younger readers will recognize reality TV star Flava Flav. Yeah, he used to do music or something. Good music. Of course as a civil liberties guy, "Fight the Power" is right up my alley.
Hey, why not totally change gears with some Motorhead... a little Ace of Spades, may be in order. Just rip of your shirt, crank this up to 11, stand on your desk, bang your head and start screaming along, "The Ace of Spades, the Ace of Spades Uh huh...." Nobody at work will ever fuck with you again. I promise.
While you're up there on your desk, what the hell... drop your trou too and holler at the top of your lungs, "Sllaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyeeeeerrrrrrr!"
And as long as my theme is brainless fun... well, what could be more brainless than this song?
Have a good weekend y'all. Teach a kid to shoot, preferably safely, if you get a chance.
It's been a decent week. Despite having the kind of workload this week that one normally doesn't see outside of a North Korean labor camp, I've had fun. Good things happened.
Over the weekend, I taught Son of Rouleur to shoot a BB gun. He had bugged me for about a month beforehand about getting a BB gun, and since I'm Second Amendment Positive, I agreed and we picked out a Daisy Buck, the smallest model available. Son of... is 6 and it's recommended for kids 10 and older, but that's just the products liability lawyers talking. 6 is fine, if your kid is mature enough, understands the safety rules, and has a shred of judgment. Son of... does, so home came the gun with a little trap, and a big jar of a few thousand BBs.
For about a week, I made him keep it around the house unloaded, and handle it. We learned about the safety, the trigger, the charging lever and the stock; we learned how to carry it safely, how to treat all guns as if they were loaded, and how to aim. Then there were the lessons about how you don't fool with people who play with guns, and if you find a gun laying around, don't touch but notify teacher, mommy and daddy, or a cop. Most of all we learned about the muzzle, not pointing that at anybody even inadvertently, and not shooting people or yourself. This involved checking out that how that big permanent wrinkle in daddy's index fingernail is from where a BB went through the finger and lodged under the nail. The doc, a friend of my dad's who was also a bigtime surgeon (when not big game hunting) had to pull the nail off with pliers. He could have done it with less pain, he said, but as an avid hunter, he told me that if I was man enough to do a damn fool thing like shoot my own finger, I was damn sure man enough to deal with having him pull the nail off with pliers and dig out the BB with a scalpel.
Son of absorbed the safety lessons for a week, and seemed to understand what it all meant. So last Saturday we whipped out the trap and target and set up a mini-range in the basement hallway. That's a cool thing about spring/air BB guns - they are mild enough to shoot indoors with little concern. I swathed the end of the hall with a matress pad, a blanket, and the pad from a chair, and set up the trap in front of that mess. I stood the boy about 7 feet away, instructed him to use the proper stance, and squeeze gently, keeping his eyes open. I expected him to shoot a tiny hole in the ceiling.
Damned if he didn't put a BB into the 10 ring.
So on Sunday we shot too, and a couple nights this week. Nothing major; we just take turns burning off 20 or 30 BBs at night, poking holes in targets. I can shoot alright and am doing my best to set a good example. Son of's shot groups are getting tighter, and he is enjoying both the challenge of shooting properly, and the discipline of it. It also helps that I've impressed on him that it's a grown-up thing, the first grown-up thing he's ever gotten to do. He enjoys that fact, and tries to measure up to what he perceives as responsible, grown up behavior. For my part, I'm enjoying passing on something my dad passed on to me, and something his dad did with him, ad infinitum.
Joy.
Other good things happened. I got out for a short ride yesterday with Beppo and Joaquin on the Haole Hauler, the Kona fixie cross bike which is turning into quite a damned beautiful bike with the wood fenders, Phil hub, brown leather saddle and tape and so forth. Yes, I've built a bike to meet my idea of what a bike oughtta look like, and it's ridiculously tasteful. "Looks like a magazine bike" is what one of my friends said about it. I promise I'll post some pictures soon.
I also read an amazing and inspiring story today that reminded me why I believe there is a God, not so much on a hoity-toity theological churchy level, but at a level of gut instinct and intuition. The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash - normally a moderately conservative political writer - went to Haiti with a Catholic priest whose mission in life is to help Haitians. What he saw in Haiti was terrible, almost unspeakable suffering. He also saw a surpassing love that cannot possibly come from one man's mind alone; it is inspired by something outside of us. In addition to being a compelling story, it's one of the best written articles I've read in years, and it probably deserves a Pulitzer nomination. Take 10 minutes and read the article. I promise you, you will not regret it.
Enough earnestness already. Time for the tunes. The theme for this week is mostly brainless.
I'm in a good mood so let's have a little Fatboy Slim. Dude's pretty unctuous but he turns out some good music. Brainless but good.
Here's some music that's semi-brained and good, a little Public Enemy. Younger readers will recognize reality TV star Flava Flav. Yeah, he used to do music or something. Good music. Of course as a civil liberties guy, "Fight the Power" is right up my alley.
Hey, why not totally change gears with some Motorhead... a little Ace of Spades, may be in order. Just rip of your shirt, crank this up to 11, stand on your desk, bang your head and start screaming along, "The Ace of Spades, the Ace of Spades Uh huh...." Nobody at work will ever fuck with you again. I promise.
While you're up there on your desk, what the hell... drop your trou too and holler at the top of your lungs, "Sllaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyeeeeerrrrrrr!"
And as long as my theme is brainless fun... well, what could be more brainless than this song?
Have a good weekend y'all. Teach a kid to shoot, preferably safely, if you get a chance.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Random Stuff
The U.S. is having a surprisingly good Olympics in terms of winning and placing (showing and placing, technically) in events. It feels weird though, since Canada is hosting the event and had such high hopes. Team USA even knocked the Canadian Men's Hockey team out of the finals round yesterday. This is totally unexpected since winter sports, other than college basketball, aren't really our bag, man. I don't want to feel ashamed about American success (hegemony?) here but I feel terrible for my Canadian friends who are no doubt experiencing a crisis of confidence right now.
In short, what our Olympic team has done is like going to a guy's house for a dinner party, then bringing his wife home with you, then standing on a platform outside his house while a band plays your bumper music, and the bumper music is something the guy hates hates hates.
I mean, celebrate all the fun you're having and stuff, but this has totally wrecked the party for the guy who was so graciously hosting you. Were Canada a shithead nation of some sort, I wouldn't feel bad about it. In fact, it'd be fun to humiliate The Hermit Kingdom, or to smear egg on the face of that guy who keeps threatening to kill all the Jews, or for that matter any number of dictators whose grasp on power can be hurt with displays of mortality. See, that's what power is good for, for bringing evil mofo's down a notch.
But Canada is awesome. Even Canadians who hate America (and there are lots of them) are generally way too polite to get in your face about it, and they probably vacation at Hilton Head each February anyhow. I don't mind it when we beat up on Canada a little, but damn, we are just punking their Olympic team and I'm cringing about it.
Oh well. At least Canada can take consolation in the fact that no matter how embarrassing their team's performance has been, it's nothing compared to the embarrassment covering the loins of the Norwegian curlers. The last time I saw pants like that, 13 guys climbing out of a car at the circus were wearing them. I think it's fair to say that with these pants, Argyle's moment in the sun has once again passed us by for another 30 years. If you've never seen a photo of something caught in the act of jumping the shark, prepare yourself for a treat as Argyle leaves the ramp...
In short, what our Olympic team has done is like going to a guy's house for a dinner party, then bringing his wife home with you, then standing on a platform outside his house while a band plays your bumper music, and the bumper music is something the guy hates hates hates.
I mean, celebrate all the fun you're having and stuff, but this has totally wrecked the party for the guy who was so graciously hosting you. Were Canada a shithead nation of some sort, I wouldn't feel bad about it. In fact, it'd be fun to humiliate The Hermit Kingdom, or to smear egg on the face of that guy who keeps threatening to kill all the Jews, or for that matter any number of dictators whose grasp on power can be hurt with displays of mortality. See, that's what power is good for, for bringing evil mofo's down a notch.
But Canada is awesome. Even Canadians who hate America (and there are lots of them) are generally way too polite to get in your face about it, and they probably vacation at Hilton Head each February anyhow. I don't mind it when we beat up on Canada a little, but damn, we are just punking their Olympic team and I'm cringing about it.
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Oh well. At least Canada can take consolation in the fact that no matter how embarrassing their team's performance has been, it's nothing compared to the embarrassment covering the loins of the Norwegian curlers. The last time I saw pants like that, 13 guys climbing out of a car at the circus were wearing them. I think it's fair to say that with these pants, Argyle's moment in the sun has once again passed us by for another 30 years. If you've never seen a photo of something caught in the act of jumping the shark, prepare yourself for a treat as Argyle leaves the ramp...
What Hath Vaughters Wrought?
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The guy at the center of the greatest NY Post headline of all time - "Headless Body Found In Topless Bar" - was denied parole again. I wasn't sure what the full extent of his crime was until I read this account. Turns out he was *way* worse than just a murdering decapitator. What did he do that was so bad? Weeeellll...
Dingle shot the owner of the strip joint and held four women hostage—raping one and robbing others—all the while drinking heavily and snorting coke, reported the Post. While going through the club manager's purse, he found a business card that identified her as a mortician. The card led him to his next brilliant idea: demanding that she cut off the dead man's head with a steak knife and dig out the bullet. When the deed was done, he hijacked a gypsy cab taking two of the strippers and the severed head to Manhattan where he blacked out at the wheel. His hostages ran for it, and alerted the police, after which Dingle was arrested, tried and sentenced to 25 years to life.It's funny. I feel like a total scofflaw because I have two unpaid parking tickets. (Two tickets that will be paid within a few days). And here's this guy... damn. Just damn.
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Anthem for Spring
I'm heading to the all-weekend doc's in a few minutes to get some antibiotics for a raging case of strep. Kicking me in the ass wasn't enough for karma; apparently she now feels the need to kick me in the throat, a need that I'm sure many of my friends feel quite frequently. So I didn't get a ride in yesterday, but I probably will get out for an hour tomorrow around lunch, weather, job, and bleeding throat permitting.
It's not all about my ongoing feud with Dama Fortuna, however. Being laid up does have its advantages. I've been thinking that what we cyclists need as this winter drags on interminably - nearly as long as what they normally get in, oh, New Mexico, is a song to warm our hearts, and our knees, as we try to recover the fitness we lost when we declined to ride the trainer for two hours for the 63rd straight night last night.
Here it is - the song we need to start singing now to raise our spirits and warm our hearts through what looks to be a very cold and wet start to our season. It's a good melody that I cribbed from an insurance company ad about how if get together with our racially and generationally diverse life partners (who are probably denied certain types of insurance coverage in many states, BTW), hold candles and sing heartrending pop ballads in the near-dark, our insurance company will meet our emotional needs. Which emotional balm is what insurance seems to be for, if I follow current debates about it correctly. I think this whole singing/candle-ing/hand holding idea is a very realistic approach to most of the problems we face, including the fact that many of us cyclists have ballooned up like the late Marlon Brando in the month after a Golden Corral opened up outside his compound. Those first couple long hills this year are going to be mighty interesting... And if there's anything that would cause me to want to sing and wave candles around and hold hands in the dark with my diverse life partners, it's definitely that.
So won't you all sing along with me?
(With apologies to Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston)
You and I, must make a pact;
We must bring embrocation back,
Where there’s a ride, I’ll be there.
I’ll reach out my hands to knees,
Slather on some warming grease,
If you call the ride, I’ll be there.
I'll be there to warm your knees,
On the road, or in the trees,
In the rain, and in the breeze...
Wherever you ride, I'll be there.
I'll be there with a smell that's strong
Medium-hot strength, sticks right on
If we go for a ride, you'll smell me there.
I’ll fill your knickers with mint and camphor
Limber knees are the thing I'm after
Whenever there’s a ride, I'll be there
Embrocation to protect you,
Washes off with a wet wipe or two,
Just call the ride, and I'll be there
If you should ever find something new,
Wind front tights or knee warmers too
'Em… brocation still will be there
Quoleum, baby, yeah yeah
And Sportbalm toooooo, Elite and Mad Al…chemy,
Better go with mild under tights,
Or your legs will burn and keep you up at night.
Just call Bikeman.com, it will be there.
Just call Bikeman.com, it will be there.
It's not all about my ongoing feud with Dama Fortuna, however. Being laid up does have its advantages. I've been thinking that what we cyclists need as this winter drags on interminably - nearly as long as what they normally get in, oh, New Mexico, is a song to warm our hearts, and our knees, as we try to recover the fitness we lost when we declined to ride the trainer for two hours for the 63rd straight night last night.
Here it is - the song we need to start singing now to raise our spirits and warm our hearts through what looks to be a very cold and wet start to our season. It's a good melody that I cribbed from an insurance company ad about how if get together with our racially and generationally diverse life partners (who are probably denied certain types of insurance coverage in many states, BTW), hold candles and sing heartrending pop ballads in the near-dark, our insurance company will meet our emotional needs. Which emotional balm is what insurance seems to be for, if I follow current debates about it correctly. I think this whole singing/candle-ing/hand holding idea is a very realistic approach to most of the problems we face, including the fact that many of us cyclists have ballooned up like the late Marlon Brando in the month after a Golden Corral opened up outside his compound. Those first couple long hills this year are going to be mighty interesting... And if there's anything that would cause me to want to sing and wave candles around and hold hands in the dark with my diverse life partners, it's definitely that.
So won't you all sing along with me?
(With apologies to Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston)
You and I, must make a pact;
We must bring embrocation back,
Where there’s a ride, I’ll be there.
I’ll reach out my hands to knees,
Slather on some warming grease,
If you call the ride, I’ll be there.
I'll be there to warm your knees,
On the road, or in the trees,
In the rain, and in the breeze...
Wherever you ride, I'll be there.
I'll be there with a smell that's strong
Medium-hot strength, sticks right on
If we go for a ride, you'll smell me there.
I’ll fill your knickers with mint and camphor
Limber knees are the thing I'm after
Whenever there’s a ride, I'll be there
Embrocation to protect you,
Washes off with a wet wipe or two,
Just call the ride, and I'll be there
If you should ever find something new,
Wind front tights or knee warmers too
'Em… brocation still will be there
Quoleum, baby, yeah yeah
And Sportbalm toooooo, Elite and Mad Al…chemy,
Better go with mild under tights,
Or your legs will burn and keep you up at night.
Just call Bikeman.com, it will be there.
Just call Bikeman.com, it will be there.
Sadly, the British Bobsled Team's Novel Approach Failed to
Produce the Gold Medal The Nation Had Long Hoped For
Produce the Gold Medal The Nation Had Long Hoped For
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Phew.
Sometimes, things work out okay despite clouds and cloud-like things floating around on the horizon.
I finally got in to see a neurosurgeon about my back today. The news? All good. And interesting.
After reading my various MRI's, he quizzed me about my background - sedentary, active, what do I do, how did I hurt my back. He did a bunch of nerve function tests - grip tests, pushing and pulling with my feet, all that. Then he started 'splainin' what's up with my back.
The main problem is that I have a small bulged disc between L5 and S1. That disc also has a tiny of a tear in it, which will heal. The pain that I had from that was disproportionate to the injury. The mechanics of the disc injury are pretty interesting though. Turns out when you tear the disc where I did - the anterior side - the pain causes the muscles in the posterior of the spine to lock the spine in place. Sometimes nerves get tweaked in the process, sometimes it can pull various things out of alignment. The doc is pretty sure that what happened to me is that when I hurt the disc, my lumbar muscles just locked up my lower back. Now here's the funny part - the doc says I probably wouldn't have hurt so bad, but for the fact that I have "just a remarkably massive amount of back muscle." Oh yeah, baby got back... Years of rugby and powerlifting has built up what looks on MRI's like a couple beef loins running up my back. So even a minor injury (to the neurosurgeon's way of thinking - he sees a lot of really hurtin' units) causes a huge reaction; if those muscles even halfway tense up, it's a huge amount of force. Maybe there was some pulled or torn muscle through the sacrum - those big engines were likely pulling everything out of place when the disc tore. Now this sounds like a bad situation, hypertrophy of the lower back muscles causing a lockup. It's not that bad though. The same thing that caused the problem, the doc says, is one of the keys to long term health for me. Evidently, the top round roast I carry around just above my hindquarters will also do a really good job of keeping my "about what I'd expect in somebody your age" degenerating spine squared away - though I need to do a lot of stomach work to offset the monster back muscle.
So it was good news on the lower back.
As for the thoracic spine and all the weirdness up there.. well, it turns out I'm just a freak, basically. Just built a little different, and this difference bothered the radiologists. I have a considerable amount of degeneration in the upper back (thanks Rugby and US Army!) but again a lot of muscle holding everything in place, which I've built up over the years because if I don't lift back, my back hurts a bit. The thickened spinal cord would be a problem on most people, but I've evidently got the spinal column of a Triceratops, with enough room to fit a couple spinal cords comfortably inside there. Though the spurred and beat up thoracic vertebrae would also be a cause for alarm on normal people, I'm enough of a mutant that it's no big deal, my back's built for comfort, and as long as there's no pain, just keep up the exercise and don't worry about it. Why is the spinal cord thickened? No reason. No evidence of any injury, no evidence of various sorts of tumors, benign or malignant. Just a bit thick, in an abnormal but sort of normal way.
The verdict? Minor back injury, good prognosis. Surprisingly healthy considering everything.
The long term program is pretty simple, then, according to the doc. Start riding my bike more to get skinny. [Ed. Stop eating like a swine...] Get with a good PT or trainer and develop a strong core strength program. Do yoga or pilates or martial arts to work on flexibility and core strength. Don't sweat it, and as long as it doesn't hurt more, don't ease up too much.
I'm feeling some relief here - not exactly euphoria since this is more or less what I expected, though categorically ruling out spinal sarcomas is, on the balance, better than living in suspense. It's also nice to find out that all those years of deadlifts and clean&press and power cleans and squats were good for something.
So I'm happy, even though it sucks to lose my one good excuse for leaving meetings early.
Good stuff from Satchmo there. That's a great song because when you hear him sing it, you can tell he means it. It's something that a guy who put up with as much crap in his life as he did, could still give off a vibe of loving life to the core.
Another guy who clearly liked what he was doing was Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. He played a lot of instruments and a lot of different styles. This is a good blues piece, but check out what he does at the start with a fiddle. Amazing talent...
I don't know how happy Lightnin' Hopkins was. He sang a darker version of the blues than most folks. He had a interesting part in my life too. I was getting hammered in a bar in a gritty industrial neighborhood in Northern Germany. The guy next to me was getting hammered too, I mean bombed. We started chatting a little and he said something about his wife pissing him off. I'd just broken up with a girl and I said something to the effect of "my woman done left me," in English. The German guy, Stan was his name, then starts spitting out blues lyrics and we start laughing. Turns out he was a huge roots blues fan. I had a dozen or 20 blues records at that point, mostly the better groomed BB King type stuff, I was still a young guy and pretty uneducated, but importantly I had some stuff he didn't have, including a couple Lightnin' Hopkins collections. So we got together a couple weeks later, dubbed each other's collections onto cassette tape, got hammered again, and wound up friends. He was a German police detective sergeant who had a million interesting stories, but for me the most interesting thing is it took his perspective to turn me on to a really great form of American roots music. So whenever I hear Lightnin' Hopkins, I always think of Stan, whose woman just wouldn't get offa his ass.
Here's some Son House, with "Death Letter Blues." He was a little crazy and maybe a little bad, served hard time for killing a man, had a rough life generally, and maybe taught Robert Johnson how to play the guitar. That's a decent C.V. for a blues musician.
Of course when one crazy sucker makes a good blues song, other crazy suckers will come along and copy him. Yeah, that's Jack White.
The blues really do seem timeless and endless, and open to new reinterpretation. Here's Allman Brothers' side project Gov't Mule singing blues classic "John the Revelator."
There are some new blues that are pretty damn good too, if you keep your ears open.
I finally got in to see a neurosurgeon about my back today. The news? All good. And interesting.
After reading my various MRI's, he quizzed me about my background - sedentary, active, what do I do, how did I hurt my back. He did a bunch of nerve function tests - grip tests, pushing and pulling with my feet, all that. Then he started 'splainin' what's up with my back.
The main problem is that I have a small bulged disc between L5 and S1. That disc also has a tiny of a tear in it, which will heal. The pain that I had from that was disproportionate to the injury. The mechanics of the disc injury are pretty interesting though. Turns out when you tear the disc where I did - the anterior side - the pain causes the muscles in the posterior of the spine to lock the spine in place. Sometimes nerves get tweaked in the process, sometimes it can pull various things out of alignment. The doc is pretty sure that what happened to me is that when I hurt the disc, my lumbar muscles just locked up my lower back. Now here's the funny part - the doc says I probably wouldn't have hurt so bad, but for the fact that I have "just a remarkably massive amount of back muscle." Oh yeah, baby got back... Years of rugby and powerlifting has built up what looks on MRI's like a couple beef loins running up my back. So even a minor injury (to the neurosurgeon's way of thinking - he sees a lot of really hurtin' units) causes a huge reaction; if those muscles even halfway tense up, it's a huge amount of force. Maybe there was some pulled or torn muscle through the sacrum - those big engines were likely pulling everything out of place when the disc tore. Now this sounds like a bad situation, hypertrophy of the lower back muscles causing a lockup. It's not that bad though. The same thing that caused the problem, the doc says, is one of the keys to long term health for me. Evidently, the top round roast I carry around just above my hindquarters will also do a really good job of keeping my "about what I'd expect in somebody your age" degenerating spine squared away - though I need to do a lot of stomach work to offset the monster back muscle.
So it was good news on the lower back.
As for the thoracic spine and all the weirdness up there.. well, it turns out I'm just a freak, basically. Just built a little different, and this difference bothered the radiologists. I have a considerable amount of degeneration in the upper back (thanks Rugby and US Army!) but again a lot of muscle holding everything in place, which I've built up over the years because if I don't lift back, my back hurts a bit. The thickened spinal cord would be a problem on most people, but I've evidently got the spinal column of a Triceratops, with enough room to fit a couple spinal cords comfortably inside there. Though the spurred and beat up thoracic vertebrae would also be a cause for alarm on normal people, I'm enough of a mutant that it's no big deal, my back's built for comfort, and as long as there's no pain, just keep up the exercise and don't worry about it. Why is the spinal cord thickened? No reason. No evidence of any injury, no evidence of various sorts of tumors, benign or malignant. Just a bit thick, in an abnormal but sort of normal way.
The verdict? Minor back injury, good prognosis. Surprisingly healthy considering everything.
The long term program is pretty simple, then, according to the doc. Start riding my bike more to get skinny. [Ed. Stop eating like a swine...] Get with a good PT or trainer and develop a strong core strength program. Do yoga or pilates or martial arts to work on flexibility and core strength. Don't sweat it, and as long as it doesn't hurt more, don't ease up too much.
I'm feeling some relief here - not exactly euphoria since this is more or less what I expected, though categorically ruling out spinal sarcomas is, on the balance, better than living in suspense. It's also nice to find out that all those years of deadlifts and clean&press and power cleans and squats were good for something.
So I'm happy, even though it sucks to lose my one good excuse for leaving meetings early.
Good stuff from Satchmo there. That's a great song because when you hear him sing it, you can tell he means it. It's something that a guy who put up with as much crap in his life as he did, could still give off a vibe of loving life to the core.
Another guy who clearly liked what he was doing was Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. He played a lot of instruments and a lot of different styles. This is a good blues piece, but check out what he does at the start with a fiddle. Amazing talent...
I don't know how happy Lightnin' Hopkins was. He sang a darker version of the blues than most folks. He had a interesting part in my life too. I was getting hammered in a bar in a gritty industrial neighborhood in Northern Germany. The guy next to me was getting hammered too, I mean bombed. We started chatting a little and he said something about his wife pissing him off. I'd just broken up with a girl and I said something to the effect of "my woman done left me," in English. The German guy, Stan was his name, then starts spitting out blues lyrics and we start laughing. Turns out he was a huge roots blues fan. I had a dozen or 20 blues records at that point, mostly the better groomed BB King type stuff, I was still a young guy and pretty uneducated, but importantly I had some stuff he didn't have, including a couple Lightnin' Hopkins collections. So we got together a couple weeks later, dubbed each other's collections onto cassette tape, got hammered again, and wound up friends. He was a German police detective sergeant who had a million interesting stories, but for me the most interesting thing is it took his perspective to turn me on to a really great form of American roots music. So whenever I hear Lightnin' Hopkins, I always think of Stan, whose woman just wouldn't get offa his ass.
Here's some Son House, with "Death Letter Blues." He was a little crazy and maybe a little bad, served hard time for killing a man, had a rough life generally, and maybe taught Robert Johnson how to play the guitar. That's a decent C.V. for a blues musician.
Of course when one crazy sucker makes a good blues song, other crazy suckers will come along and copy him. Yeah, that's Jack White.
The blues really do seem timeless and endless, and open to new reinterpretation. Here's Allman Brothers' side project Gov't Mule singing blues classic "John the Revelator."
There are some new blues that are pretty damn good too, if you keep your ears open.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
More Oh, Limp Pics
Maybe it's just because I hate NBC's coverage of the Olympics, but I'd swear they are waiting to spring John Tesh, Al Trautwig and that Clinton Kelly dude from "What Not To Wear" as the announcing team for the figure skating finals.
Ahh... still on about the skating. Yes, I am, because it's getting rammed down my throat. I want to like it better, but with the exception of a few very self-confident male and female skaters, the damn competition is a weep-fest. I respect the athleticism; frankly, dancing gymnastics on ice skates is probably the most amazing thing in sports ever, or at least since David Wells pitched a perfect game while drunk. But the scene that the television presentation creates around the skaters, with The Weeping Bench, the Compulsory Teddy Bear Clutch, and The Crying Post Skate Interview, totally undercuts the athletic seriousness of the skating. It's a weird dichotomy between the hyper athletic display on the ice, and the bathos when they step to the other side of the boards.
It's like this. Imagine you were dating a girl (okay, girl readers - be creative and assume I mean "guy" when I use "girl" here) who you thought was pretty cool, professionally accomplished, well put together and friendly, great education, good family you know by reputation, and she owned a nice house, had a good upscale car and so on. You'd think she was totally together, talented and paying attention to what she is and how she looks, a total package. Then you visit her place for dinner and find out that one spare room is dedicated entirely to pink teddy bears, another room is refrigerated and used exclusively for long term milk chocolate storage, and a third is a shrine to a former boyfriend who left her in college (a decade ago) for her former best friend... it would totally undercut your image of her and sort of destroy what she's trying to do in other areas of her life. That's what the teddy bear / weeping bench stuff does; it just loses me and whispers in my ear, "why don't you click over to Discovery to see if Bear Grylls has succeeded in killing himself yet?"
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What the Winter Olympics needs is a downhill snow mountain bike race event, probably on the downhhill ski slope. Limited to full suspension 29'ers. Dope testing mandatory for all participant - if a competitor is found in a chemically un-altered state, he gets ejected from the games immediately and receives a two year ban from the sport. I know for a fact, based on winter riding around town on my 29'er and on the local sledding hill, that this idea will work.
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Curling would be much more interesting if beer drinking and eating of greasy food was strongly encouraged, as it is in actual Canadian curling rinks. Curling officials should consider a biathlon, where curlers (tossers?) would run to the bar for a beer and a bacon & egg sandwich, and then like the skiing biathletes, struggle mightily to get their surging heartrates under 180 in order to fire off an accurate shot. You'd have to post portable defibrillators near the lanes. This could be done unobtrusively, since portable defibrillators look kind of like curling rocks and even come with convenient carrying handles.
Oh no, it doesn't stop there. As in the TdF, you could wire the competitors and show their heart rates. *That* would be exciting. I can hear Phil now... "Ted 'Newfie Ted' McClarty is struggling bravely to get back to the lane with that four pack of beers in waxed paper cups... he's operating on nothing but pure courage today." You could award bonus points for athletes who bought a whole round of brews for everybody including competitors, or who came back with enough poutine to share with the whole team. There could be side competitions (and gambling) in which competitors would compare EKG's, or see who takes the most massive bathroom breaks since "the old waterworks, it don't work as well as it useter." Oh yeah, and we need to penalize competitors who say "eh" while chatting with each other by making them drink each time they say it.
This can't possibly fail. It will become the new ice skating.
------------------------------------------
Well, I'll shut my mouth. The snowboarding has officially gone nuts in the last couple years since I paid attention four or five years ago. Since I haven't watched in a couple of Olympics, I decided to consider some pro-snowboard communications I received in answer to the last post, and actually paid attention. I was immediately struck by how much air they catch now, and how much smoother their landings have to be - partly due to the height they're dropping from, partly due to how the sport has gotten more refined in the last several years.
I still don't 'get' the sport; Lindsey Vonn's screaming downhill run is far more moving to me, but I'm not as baffled by the snowboarding as I used to be. The kids got some skills, and now that it's starting to look like high quality skateboarding, I'm starting to get it.
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The team short track skating events are pretty awesome too. Is it just me, or are those events basically Madison-on-Ice-Skates with the slingshot starts, pushes, and goofy helmets? It's also weird how so many U.S. racers have gotten so good at this sport in just the last decade or so. Is it the Ohno renaissance? I couldn't say. It's good to watch though.
Ahh... still on about the skating. Yes, I am, because it's getting rammed down my throat. I want to like it better, but with the exception of a few very self-confident male and female skaters, the damn competition is a weep-fest. I respect the athleticism; frankly, dancing gymnastics on ice skates is probably the most amazing thing in sports ever, or at least since David Wells pitched a perfect game while drunk. But the scene that the television presentation creates around the skaters, with The Weeping Bench, the Compulsory Teddy Bear Clutch, and The Crying Post Skate Interview, totally undercuts the athletic seriousness of the skating. It's a weird dichotomy between the hyper athletic display on the ice, and the bathos when they step to the other side of the boards.
It's like this. Imagine you were dating a girl (okay, girl readers - be creative and assume I mean "guy" when I use "girl" here) who you thought was pretty cool, professionally accomplished, well put together and friendly, great education, good family you know by reputation, and she owned a nice house, had a good upscale car and so on. You'd think she was totally together, talented and paying attention to what she is and how she looks, a total package. Then you visit her place for dinner and find out that one spare room is dedicated entirely to pink teddy bears, another room is refrigerated and used exclusively for long term milk chocolate storage, and a third is a shrine to a former boyfriend who left her in college (a decade ago) for her former best friend... it would totally undercut your image of her and sort of destroy what she's trying to do in other areas of her life. That's what the teddy bear / weeping bench stuff does; it just loses me and whispers in my ear, "why don't you click over to Discovery to see if Bear Grylls has succeeded in killing himself yet?"
------------------------------------------
What the Winter Olympics needs is a downhill snow mountain bike race event, probably on the downhhill ski slope. Limited to full suspension 29'ers. Dope testing mandatory for all participant - if a competitor is found in a chemically un-altered state, he gets ejected from the games immediately and receives a two year ban from the sport. I know for a fact, based on winter riding around town on my 29'er and on the local sledding hill, that this idea will work.
------------------------------------------
Curling would be much more interesting if beer drinking and eating of greasy food was strongly encouraged, as it is in actual Canadian curling rinks. Curling officials should consider a biathlon, where curlers (tossers?) would run to the bar for a beer and a bacon & egg sandwich, and then like the skiing biathletes, struggle mightily to get their surging heartrates under 180 in order to fire off an accurate shot. You'd have to post portable defibrillators near the lanes. This could be done unobtrusively, since portable defibrillators look kind of like curling rocks and even come with convenient carrying handles.
Oh no, it doesn't stop there. As in the TdF, you could wire the competitors and show their heart rates. *That* would be exciting. I can hear Phil now... "Ted 'Newfie Ted' McClarty is struggling bravely to get back to the lane with that four pack of beers in waxed paper cups... he's operating on nothing but pure courage today." You could award bonus points for athletes who bought a whole round of brews for everybody including competitors, or who came back with enough poutine to share with the whole team. There could be side competitions (and gambling) in which competitors would compare EKG's, or see who takes the most massive bathroom breaks since "the old waterworks, it don't work as well as it useter." Oh yeah, and we need to penalize competitors who say "eh" while chatting with each other by making them drink each time they say it.
This can't possibly fail. It will become the new ice skating.
------------------------------------------
Well, I'll shut my mouth. The snowboarding has officially gone nuts in the last couple years since I paid attention four or five years ago. Since I haven't watched in a couple of Olympics, I decided to consider some pro-snowboard communications I received in answer to the last post, and actually paid attention. I was immediately struck by how much air they catch now, and how much smoother their landings have to be - partly due to the height they're dropping from, partly due to how the sport has gotten more refined in the last several years.
I still don't 'get' the sport; Lindsey Vonn's screaming downhill run is far more moving to me, but I'm not as baffled by the snowboarding as I used to be. The kids got some skills, and now that it's starting to look like high quality skateboarding, I'm starting to get it.
------------------------------------------
The team short track skating events are pretty awesome too. Is it just me, or are those events basically Madison-on-Ice-Skates with the slingshot starts, pushes, and goofy helmets? It's also weird how so many U.S. racers have gotten so good at this sport in just the last decade or so. Is it the Ohno renaissance? I couldn't say. It's good to watch though.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Random Thoughts on the Olympics
Life proceeds apace with the MRI "with contrast" occurring this afternoon. I looked at the films of my back nearly crapped myself when I saw the enormous, clearly tumorous lumps on my back and then I realized that I was actually just looking at a splotch on a greasy Five Guys bag that my kid had left on the back seat of my truck. Gotta go see the neurosurgeon and get the actual films properly read sometime this week. The release forms were funny... they asked, inter alia, whether I had eye liner tattoos (which can heat up and catch your eyelids on fire, apparently), a penile implant, or a pessary. I don't know what the hell a pessary is, and now am afraid to even look it up. I answered the form as truthfully as possible, so I said I wasn't sure whether or not I had a pessary but was pretty sure that my Robert Johnson was not surgically enlarged, despite lurid rumors to the contrary and several countries in Western Europe where most of the children between the ages of 10 and 16 look quite a bit like me.
The downtime with no biking and no real training to speak of has given me lots of time to watch the Olympics, or at least those parts of it that can be seen by viewers of the NBC affiliates. I've got some thoughts about the coverage, and the sports (not surprisingly, right?) along with other matters. Forthwith...
International hockey is really funny compared to the Big Boy version in the NHL. It's a totally different game.
Women's international hockey is the Midget Slow Mo version of the game. The players are barely taller than the boards, and the passing is wonderful because there is no defensive pressure, so players in the offensive zone have plenty of time to make beautiful passes and great shots. The women's size is shocking because we're used to seeing NHL players, who average about 6'2" and play on a 10% smaller rink. Because of the enormous international rink dimensions (which makes the women seem smaller and slower) defenders take roughly a year to match up and bother the attacking players. If defenders moved that slow in the NHL, Zdeno Chara and other heavy hitters would literally shoot 3.5" holes in goal tenders, "taking one for the team" would be an epitaph, not a compliment; and, Alexander Ovechkin would have 296 goals prior to the All Star break.
Men's international hockey, on the other hand, is the 35+ No Check Rec League. The play is fast and surprisingly skillful, and putting a body on somebody - New Jersey Grab & Grind style - earns a penalty for "body checking." Which is funny because if you don't body check in the NHL, you won't last very long in the league, unless you can score 50 and notch 50 assists, which would be easily possible if defense was basically limited to feeble stick pokes. Because there's no hitting to speak of, and more room, and because the only "icing" involves cases and cases of beers in the Canadian team's hotel room, the game seems like it's on fast forward. Because it's gentle on the body and puts a premium on skill, the number of over-the-hill and former NHL players who turn up on non-North American teams is out of control. The rosters look like the 2003 All Star game. And I haven't seen that much bad three day growth since Yassir Arafat's funeral.
Ice dancing is perhaps the gayest sport ever. I don't mean that as an attack on gay people; it's just that the sport is *soooo* gay, as if the sanctioning bodies and media folk covering it want it to fit into the stereotypical effeminate fashion makeover / wedding show sort of mold. Maybe odious Tony Kornheiser nailed it today when he called NBC's coverage, "Sports for the Lifetime set." There are overly dramatic musical choices (like Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," which is getting beaten into the ground worse than a Redskins quarterback), costumes that are simply too fabulous to die for, and everybody participating gets to have a big cry, flowers and a teddy bear several times per evening. That, and Scott Hamilton. Just thinking about figure skating makes me feel like I should be a fan of various Iranian Olympic wrestlers, and that's very disturbing so I'm going to stop thinking about it now.
Downhill skiing is still the King of the Winter Olympics. If you've ever skied on two rails before, you know what it's like to go a little fast, get out of control, and risk your neck (and bladder control) flying down a hill. Now go three times that fast. The first time I recall seeing the downhill may have been on ABC's Wide World of Sports in the early 1970's, and I recall sitting there watching the Swiss time running, with my jaw open until my chin hit my chest. There aren't any tipovers in dowhnill. There are just 100 yard lowsides that throw up a roostertail of snow, and ragdoll crashes that leave the skier unconscious and broken, or mostly so. I still have the same reaction to the downhill that I had when I was 5 - mouth agape, and admiration. It is an utterly badass sport. It doesn't hurt that the sport's own version of Ricky Williams, Bode Miller, had a good day today. In the dictionary, if you look up "reckless abandon," you'll see that Downhill Ski Racing took its place.
Luge/Skeleton - these sports are basically what your parents warned you about if you grew up in snow country. I remember hearing words to the effect of, "Don't sled on pipeline hill... that'll kill you." And, "Don't sled on that hill near Westcott... you'll go into traffic and get killed." These guys are all the kids who didn't listen. Looks like fun. Except, apparently, they weren't lying about the risk of getting killed.
I am geeked on biathlon. Sorry, but there it is. Cross country skiing, and shooting. It's like the chocolate and peanut butter of winter sports. Al Trautwig goes all creepy over the nordic ski chicks - who are admittedly quite attractive and it's wayyy less creepy than Trautwig going creepy over young female gymnasts - but you roll in the guns with the hotties and it turns into a Freudian smorgasbord. On the men's side... Men's biathlon is one of the few things that even makes me miss the Warsaw Pact - it was always fun seeing East German or Russian special forces officers competing against our part time amateurs, in the way it's always fun to watch somebody who tries wayyy too hard to be good at something, and succeeds, but gives off the vibe that they'd rather be getting their nails pulled out in the Gulag, which might happen if they don't win. It was always a losing bet for them too because ever since WWII, the Finns have proven quite capable of beating Russians and Germans in any sort of combined skiing/shooting event. Biathlon is still awesome though. I think the only way this event could get better is if you added live deer, or perhaps mandatory beer and sausage stops.
Snowboard... I'm sorry. It's okay I guess, but I live on the wrong side of the the two sticks / one stick divide. It just doesn't do it for me. I'm not anti-snowboard, if it's on, I'll watch it. But it's not that impressive. And seeing whole podiums-full of snowboarders fall victim to WADA doesn't help my image of them. My over/under for snowboards busted for dope this year is 3. Yeah, that sounds pretty low, but they've had about 8 years of notice that they will be tested for dope, and considering WADA will be testing 7 or 8 snowboarders total, I think 3 is a good median. That said, I'm taking the over...
Al Trautwig, apparently banished from the figure skating for coming across as Creepy Uncle Al at gymnastics, has turned up at the nordic events. It sent a shiver down my spine to hear him discussing a Polish cross country skier as the "winner of a Tour de France like skiing event." What made it Tour de France like, Al? Did the winner get busted for doping? Was it a race featuring at least several people who raced against each other? Were the people involved dressed in bright colors? Did it occur mostly in France? Was it Tour de France-like in some inchoate but very real fashion? About a hundred insults crossed my mind in the five minutes before I turned the volume down. It was just like the good old days on Versus.
I can't wait for the curling.
U.S. Olympic coverage is a combination of infantile and xenophobic. All the coverage is about the obstacles the poor U.S. athletes had to overcome, but it's always traditional obstacles - very trite helpings of steaming treacle. There is plenty of coverage of how the athlete had to get up at 1:00 AM to practice 23 hours a day under an insane coach who used to be a North Korean prison camp commandant, or how the middle/middle class asian/american/latina skater had to work to earn the grudging appreciation of her upper middle class asian/american peers and an insane, obese Bulgarian mad genius coach - but nothing about how a terrible shortage of Thai stick decimated the snowboard community in aught six... Meanwhile, you get tremendous coverage of the American who is in 143d place, but no coverage of the Latvian who is in sixth, with a good outside shot at the podium. The coverage also gives the vibe that the competitors are being shown out of order, to try to heighten the drama about whether the plucky American, who has never done shit in his event's world champs, will come from nowhere to win. (The answer is almost always no).
The soppy coverage of the personal angle doesn't always improve viewers' enjoyment of the event. We found out all about Dale Begg-Smith, an "internet mogul" who is also a freestyle mogul skier, who won the gold. He's aloof, sticks it to the media whenever he can, acts punky and petulant, and visibly acts like an ass around his fellow competitors. Turns out his coaches on the Canadian team told him a few years ago he should spend more time on his skiing and less on his business as the owner-operator of a multi-million dollar internet spam corporation. So he took advantage of his dual citizenship and moved to Oz. NBC's talking heads thought it was just great that the guy skis for the love of the sport, not for endorsement deals. Me, I thought it was great that I wasn't there in the crowd, because I'd probably try to strangle this bottom feeder in front of an audience of billions, just to give fair warning to the other spammers. I don't think it occurred to anybody at NBC sports that revealing a competitor as an international spam king probably has the opposite effect on the audience than the one they were anticipating. Oddly enough, this was the one occasion I've ever said to myself, "Gee, I wish Trautwig was on the spot to discuss this guy."
I *really* like curling and am looking forward to watching it...
The downtime with no biking and no real training to speak of has given me lots of time to watch the Olympics, or at least those parts of it that can be seen by viewers of the NBC affiliates. I've got some thoughts about the coverage, and the sports (not surprisingly, right?) along with other matters. Forthwith...
International hockey is really funny compared to the Big Boy version in the NHL. It's a totally different game.
Women's international hockey is the Midget Slow Mo version of the game. The players are barely taller than the boards, and the passing is wonderful because there is no defensive pressure, so players in the offensive zone have plenty of time to make beautiful passes and great shots. The women's size is shocking because we're used to seeing NHL players, who average about 6'2" and play on a 10% smaller rink. Because of the enormous international rink dimensions (which makes the women seem smaller and slower) defenders take roughly a year to match up and bother the attacking players. If defenders moved that slow in the NHL, Zdeno Chara and other heavy hitters would literally shoot 3.5" holes in goal tenders, "taking one for the team" would be an epitaph, not a compliment; and, Alexander Ovechkin would have 296 goals prior to the All Star break.
Men's international hockey, on the other hand, is the 35+ No Check Rec League. The play is fast and surprisingly skillful, and putting a body on somebody - New Jersey Grab & Grind style - earns a penalty for "body checking." Which is funny because if you don't body check in the NHL, you won't last very long in the league, unless you can score 50 and notch 50 assists, which would be easily possible if defense was basically limited to feeble stick pokes. Because there's no hitting to speak of, and more room, and because the only "icing" involves cases and cases of beers in the Canadian team's hotel room, the game seems like it's on fast forward. Because it's gentle on the body and puts a premium on skill, the number of over-the-hill and former NHL players who turn up on non-North American teams is out of control. The rosters look like the 2003 All Star game. And I haven't seen that much bad three day growth since Yassir Arafat's funeral.
Ice dancing is perhaps the gayest sport ever. I don't mean that as an attack on gay people; it's just that the sport is *soooo* gay, as if the sanctioning bodies and media folk covering it want it to fit into the stereotypical effeminate fashion makeover / wedding show sort of mold. Maybe odious Tony Kornheiser nailed it today when he called NBC's coverage, "Sports for the Lifetime set." There are overly dramatic musical choices (like Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," which is getting beaten into the ground worse than a Redskins quarterback), costumes that are simply too fabulous to die for, and everybody participating gets to have a big cry, flowers and a teddy bear several times per evening. That, and Scott Hamilton. Just thinking about figure skating makes me feel like I should be a fan of various Iranian Olympic wrestlers, and that's very disturbing so I'm going to stop thinking about it now.
Downhill skiing is still the King of the Winter Olympics. If you've ever skied on two rails before, you know what it's like to go a little fast, get out of control, and risk your neck (and bladder control) flying down a hill. Now go three times that fast. The first time I recall seeing the downhill may have been on ABC's Wide World of Sports in the early 1970's, and I recall sitting there watching the Swiss time running, with my jaw open until my chin hit my chest. There aren't any tipovers in dowhnill. There are just 100 yard lowsides that throw up a roostertail of snow, and ragdoll crashes that leave the skier unconscious and broken, or mostly so. I still have the same reaction to the downhill that I had when I was 5 - mouth agape, and admiration. It is an utterly badass sport. It doesn't hurt that the sport's own version of Ricky Williams, Bode Miller, had a good day today. In the dictionary, if you look up "reckless abandon," you'll see that Downhill Ski Racing took its place.
Luge/Skeleton - these sports are basically what your parents warned you about if you grew up in snow country. I remember hearing words to the effect of, "Don't sled on pipeline hill... that'll kill you." And, "Don't sled on that hill near Westcott... you'll go into traffic and get killed." These guys are all the kids who didn't listen. Looks like fun. Except, apparently, they weren't lying about the risk of getting killed.
I am geeked on biathlon. Sorry, but there it is. Cross country skiing, and shooting. It's like the chocolate and peanut butter of winter sports. Al Trautwig goes all creepy over the nordic ski chicks - who are admittedly quite attractive and it's wayyy less creepy than Trautwig going creepy over young female gymnasts - but you roll in the guns with the hotties and it turns into a Freudian smorgasbord. On the men's side... Men's biathlon is one of the few things that even makes me miss the Warsaw Pact - it was always fun seeing East German or Russian special forces officers competing against our part time amateurs, in the way it's always fun to watch somebody who tries wayyy too hard to be good at something, and succeeds, but gives off the vibe that they'd rather be getting their nails pulled out in the Gulag, which might happen if they don't win. It was always a losing bet for them too because ever since WWII, the Finns have proven quite capable of beating Russians and Germans in any sort of combined skiing/shooting event. Biathlon is still awesome though. I think the only way this event could get better is if you added live deer, or perhaps mandatory beer and sausage stops.
Snowboard... I'm sorry. It's okay I guess, but I live on the wrong side of the the two sticks / one stick divide. It just doesn't do it for me. I'm not anti-snowboard, if it's on, I'll watch it. But it's not that impressive. And seeing whole podiums-full of snowboarders fall victim to WADA doesn't help my image of them. My over/under for snowboards busted for dope this year is 3. Yeah, that sounds pretty low, but they've had about 8 years of notice that they will be tested for dope, and considering WADA will be testing 7 or 8 snowboarders total, I think 3 is a good median. That said, I'm taking the over...
Al Trautwig, apparently banished from the figure skating for coming across as Creepy Uncle Al at gymnastics, has turned up at the nordic events. It sent a shiver down my spine to hear him discussing a Polish cross country skier as the "winner of a Tour de France like skiing event." What made it Tour de France like, Al? Did the winner get busted for doping? Was it a race featuring at least several people who raced against each other? Were the people involved dressed in bright colors? Did it occur mostly in France? Was it Tour de France-like in some inchoate but very real fashion? About a hundred insults crossed my mind in the five minutes before I turned the volume down. It was just like the good old days on Versus.
I can't wait for the curling.
U.S. Olympic coverage is a combination of infantile and xenophobic. All the coverage is about the obstacles the poor U.S. athletes had to overcome, but it's always traditional obstacles - very trite helpings of steaming treacle. There is plenty of coverage of how the athlete had to get up at 1:00 AM to practice 23 hours a day under an insane coach who used to be a North Korean prison camp commandant, or how the middle/middle class asian/american/latina skater had to work to earn the grudging appreciation of her upper middle class asian/american peers and an insane, obese Bulgarian mad genius coach - but nothing about how a terrible shortage of Thai stick decimated the snowboard community in aught six... Meanwhile, you get tremendous coverage of the American who is in 143d place, but no coverage of the Latvian who is in sixth, with a good outside shot at the podium. The coverage also gives the vibe that the competitors are being shown out of order, to try to heighten the drama about whether the plucky American, who has never done shit in his event's world champs, will come from nowhere to win. (The answer is almost always no).
The soppy coverage of the personal angle doesn't always improve viewers' enjoyment of the event. We found out all about Dale Begg-Smith, an "internet mogul" who is also a freestyle mogul skier, who won the gold. He's aloof, sticks it to the media whenever he can, acts punky and petulant, and visibly acts like an ass around his fellow competitors. Turns out his coaches on the Canadian team told him a few years ago he should spend more time on his skiing and less on his business as the owner-operator of a multi-million dollar internet spam corporation. So he took advantage of his dual citizenship and moved to Oz. NBC's talking heads thought it was just great that the guy skis for the love of the sport, not for endorsement deals. Me, I thought it was great that I wasn't there in the crowd, because I'd probably try to strangle this bottom feeder in front of an audience of billions, just to give fair warning to the other spammers. I don't think it occurred to anybody at NBC sports that revealing a competitor as an international spam king probably has the opposite effect on the audience than the one they were anticipating. Oddly enough, this was the one occasion I've ever said to myself, "Gee, I wish Trautwig was on the spot to discuss this guy."
I *really* like curling and am looking forward to watching it...
Thursday, February 11, 2010
.alt Friday
There's too much in this that appeals to me, for me not to post it. There is pop political utopianist skepticism, wood splitting, alt.country banjo pickin' refried stadium rock, tax protesters, a dude in a viking helmet, Minnesotans, and an Urban Assault Vehicle heated by a wood stove. I'm not sure I agree with everything they're saying but I like how they say it. Too bad the dude in the Viking helmet can't sing...
Okay. Enough of that straight up political horseshit. Any of you people ever hear of Uncle Tupelo? I sure did. I was a young GI stationed out at Ft. Riley, Kansas. I had a lot of friends at K-State and up in Kansas City, and we'd party in K.C. on the weekends. It's a hoppin' town, with a great music scene. A lot of great blues- and jazzmen came from KCMO, and a lot of greats washed up there when their liveliest days were over. The Westport district used to (and I think still does) shut down to car traffic from Thursday night through Saturday night, and the live music scene in the dozens of bars just rips. It was out in KC that I got introduced to all sorts of .alt - I really got to lovin' on the Rainmakers, but there were other good bands in the mix that you could catch from time to time. One band I loved (though admittedly may have caught in Columbia, MO) was Uncle Tupelo. They were really versatile and could play punk and blues and rock, but their .alt country was the thing that got any Missouri crowd rocking. I was in the presence of greatness, though I didn't know it -- they spawned a legion of imitators, but only lasted a couple years after I saw them, with the usual rock band interpersonal bullshit causing them to break up. Some members stuck around to become Wilco, Jay Farrar left to form Son Volt. Anyhow, here's one of their seminal pieces, "No Depression."
What's Son Volt? Why, it's this:
If you recognize a little tinge of REM in that, it may be because Peter Buck, of REM, produced Uncle Tupelo for a while. That's a pretty cool sound - wistful, jangly.
And speaking of .alt country, any of you ever heard of the Drive By Truckers? You should have. This song - Ronnie and Neil - is really smart, and touching, and oh-by-the-way has great rhythm guitar. It captures the complexity of American culture, mashing up Southern Man and Alabama. Reminds me of the day I found out that arch conservative (then-NRA President) Charlton Heston was the subject of a big FBI dossier back in the day because he marched for desegregation with Dr. King, and was therefore "suspect." Nothing in life is simple; you just don't know the half of it. It's easy to sloganeer (see, e.g. Rage Against the Machine), but it's better art when you hear the subtlety and contradiction of real life captured in a band's music.
That's some smart music right there. Tasty guitar licks too. Guess you're due for the weekly double. Check out DBT's "Lookout Mountain."
Okay. If I haven't lost your attention yet, then I'm about to totally run you right off track with this one. Which band inspired Uncle Tupelo, and moves the Drive By Truckers?
Why, early 80's punk (post punk? 'new era'?) act, The Minutemen, of course.
Okay. Enough of that straight up political horseshit. Any of you people ever hear of Uncle Tupelo? I sure did. I was a young GI stationed out at Ft. Riley, Kansas. I had a lot of friends at K-State and up in Kansas City, and we'd party in K.C. on the weekends. It's a hoppin' town, with a great music scene. A lot of great blues- and jazzmen came from KCMO, and a lot of greats washed up there when their liveliest days were over. The Westport district used to (and I think still does) shut down to car traffic from Thursday night through Saturday night, and the live music scene in the dozens of bars just rips. It was out in KC that I got introduced to all sorts of .alt - I really got to lovin' on the Rainmakers, but there were other good bands in the mix that you could catch from time to time. One band I loved (though admittedly may have caught in Columbia, MO) was Uncle Tupelo. They were really versatile and could play punk and blues and rock, but their .alt country was the thing that got any Missouri crowd rocking. I was in the presence of greatness, though I didn't know it -- they spawned a legion of imitators, but only lasted a couple years after I saw them, with the usual rock band interpersonal bullshit causing them to break up. Some members stuck around to become Wilco, Jay Farrar left to form Son Volt. Anyhow, here's one of their seminal pieces, "No Depression."
What's Son Volt? Why, it's this:
If you recognize a little tinge of REM in that, it may be because Peter Buck, of REM, produced Uncle Tupelo for a while. That's a pretty cool sound - wistful, jangly.
And speaking of .alt country, any of you ever heard of the Drive By Truckers? You should have. This song - Ronnie and Neil - is really smart, and touching, and oh-by-the-way has great rhythm guitar. It captures the complexity of American culture, mashing up Southern Man and Alabama. Reminds me of the day I found out that arch conservative (then-NRA President) Charlton Heston was the subject of a big FBI dossier back in the day because he marched for desegregation with Dr. King, and was therefore "suspect." Nothing in life is simple; you just don't know the half of it. It's easy to sloganeer (see, e.g. Rage Against the Machine), but it's better art when you hear the subtlety and contradiction of real life captured in a band's music.
That's some smart music right there. Tasty guitar licks too. Guess you're due for the weekly double. Check out DBT's "Lookout Mountain."
Okay. If I haven't lost your attention yet, then I'm about to totally run you right off track with this one. Which band inspired Uncle Tupelo, and moves the Drive By Truckers?
Why, early 80's punk (post punk? 'new era'?) act, The Minutemen, of course.
Compare; Contrast
I find the changing taste in Superbowl commercials over the years is an interesting reflection of our national mindset.
Then:
Now:
Used to be, Superbowl commercials mocked police states and looked upon them with a bit of horror. Now? Maybe not so much.
Then:
Now:
Used to be, Superbowl commercials mocked police states and looked upon them with a bit of horror. Now? Maybe not so much.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Toughness Factor
We were having a discussion on the team listserve about the viability / enjoyability of riding in the current blizzardy conditions in D.C. - 27.5 inches over the weekend, another 16 or so today. One teammate commented that everybody should go for a ride, because, in his opinion, the tougher a ride is, the more memorable and rewarding it is. I had to take issue with one point. I agree that the tougher a ride is, the more memorable it is; if you get dysentary while falling off a mountain and being shot at by headhunters on one of these adventure mountain bike races, you will damn sure remember it. But is it more rewarding because you return with a terminal case of the trots and tree frog poisoning?
I don't think so. I think there's a point beyond which a ride is not tough, it's merely stupid. Let me illustrate the relationship between ride toughness and ride rewardingness graphically to make my point.
Toughness does not always equal rewarding. I highly doubt that any of Sir Ernie Shackleton's guys, after eating their shoes and traveling 2000 miles in an open boat to seek rescue, thought that their Antarctic expedition would have been more rewarding, had it only been a bit tougher.
I don't think so. I think there's a point beyond which a ride is not tough, it's merely stupid. Let me illustrate the relationship between ride toughness and ride rewardingness graphically to make my point.
Toughness does not always equal rewarding. I highly doubt that any of Sir Ernie Shackleton's guys, after eating their shoes and traveling 2000 miles in an open boat to seek rescue, thought that their Antarctic expedition would have been more rewarding, had it only been a bit tougher.
Monday, February 08, 2010
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Bleepin' Friday
So apparently there's a Lance's Chance at this year's Tour de France (e.g. probably negligible) that the old spine is infested with a worse cancer than Terell Owens. Talking with the doctors today, they're going to look into what "MRI with contrast" entails for the thoracic spinal MRI. I have a feeling this is one injection that I'm going to loathe the way I loathe tax day, and any crit with a hill in the middle of it.
But aside from that downside, oh yeah, and the other possible downside, this presents endless comic possibility. Do you realize that I have a perfect out from every staff meeting - "Oh, sorry, I'd love to stick around for next year's budget projections, but the knowledge that there's an outside chance that this may be fucking cancer is just killing me today." Or, "Geez Bob, I'd love to help with that project, but, y'know, there's a slight chance that I may have a rare form of cancer, so I'm going to have to beg off."
On the very positive side, my back feels fricking awesome today for the first time in about three months, I mean really good, as in "what normal people normally feel like," so at least I've got that going for me, which is nice.
Damn. I crack myself up sometimes. It helps that I'm swilling down a triple Manhattan tonight. That Old Grandad looked so appetizing, and so dignified in his little bottle up on the shelf. I love your goatee, Old Grandad... Tell me, Old Grandad, did you shoot any damnyankees during the war?
I was discussing cocktails with this lovely gal I work with. Based on office happy hour performance, in the world of skilled bibulators, she is a decathlete, capable of throwing down in multiple drinking disciplines. So we're talking cocktails, and I'm rattling off the mixers I like - martinis at a medium dry 4 or 5:1 with olives, whisky sours, Rob Roys, and then I said I'm on a Manhattan kick. She starts laughing her ass off. "That's what my grandma used to drink all the time. It's a granny drink." "Yeah," I said. "If granny is a complete fucking alcoholic."
The Manhattan is a very simple drink. You simply take a bit of whiskey, bourbon is the best choice for it, and mix it 2:1 or 3:1 with Sweet Vermouth, some Martini and Rossi in this case. Drop in a splash of cherry juice and a shake or two of Angostura bitters, give the shaker a hearty shake, and pour it into a large brandy snifter atop a couple maraschinos. If you want to nurse it for a while, drop an ice cube or two into the glass. It won't compromise the essential nature of this cocktail - a bracing, astringent + sweet mixture. Yeah, grannies drink it. That's because she started throwing it down that magical night in 1954 when Grandad came back from Korea (pronounced "Core-ee-ah" if you're in that generation) and she hasn't stopped drinking it since. It's a grown-up drink, the same as a proper martini. Do not fuck with the Manhattan. Like your granny - if you grew up lucky - it knows how to use a chainsaw on your happy ass and will lay you low if you do not show it adequate respect. At the same time, like your granny, it goes down easy.
Wait, did I just say that? Yes I did.
I told you, you need to respect the Manhattan. It will make you do things you later regret.
The thing about the Manhattan, is it is perhaps the one cocktail that is both grownup and sophisticated, a drink that must be made with some precision, yet it is also a drink that even the most semi-incompetent bartender has trouble butchering. Two-to-one or three-to-one can be worked out on an inbred's fingers, and still have a finger or so left over. Not so, the martini; you can pollute one of them with bad gin (Seagrams), or bad Sweet Vermouth (Noilly Prat), or because you only have six toes, not seven, and lose track of the gin/vermouth ratio. You can even prostitute the Martini and tie its name to chocolate and lemon and other of the more putrid sorts of apertif. Gack! Can't hardly do that to the simple old Manhattan. Matter of fact, here's a tip that will serve you well. For Dry Vermouth in any mixer, get the French stuff. For Sweet Vermouth in a mixer or as an apertif, get the Italian stuff. And for Dry Vermouth as an apertif, go Italian as well. Team Cinzano, indeed...
Anyhouse, where were we? Oh yeah, So I'm drinking a Manhattan or four, and thinking, gee, maybe I should ask the readers about their favorite mixed drinks. Surely cyclists must love mixed drinks - low carbs, relatively low calories, sophisticated... lotta bang for the buck in them mixers.
So what is it, folks? What's your favorite mixed drink?
Leave me an answer in comments below. But please do answer.
You wouldn't want to deny a drunk dying man his last request.
Oh yeah, I forgot. You're only here for the music. Sorry about the selection. Been a goofy week though.
First, I have to send a song out to everybody who has emailed me or mentioned in comments about their struggles with Old Guy Back, or their issues, or a family member's or friend's issues with the weird spinal cord issues I'm going through. I like how Warren Zevon looked at things and most of you guys will probably relate. He faced some pretty bad suffering in his own life with some bittersweet irony. Dealing with life's little oddities is bittersweet even if you are laughing your ass off; you laugh because it's how you deal with the world, but your own good attitude doesn't erase the shot of fermented lemon juice that life's bartender sometimes serves up.
Now check this out. Everybody wants to know, why BB King sings the blues. Y'know, for a guy who has a terminal case of the blues, old BB always seems happy...
Big Mike gets a special shoutout this week. He's managed to blend sodomy jokes, breaking a rib while falling his obese ass over, and codeine with whiskey in a string of comments that surpasses his comment rate from our memorable "oh shit I'm totally blowing my diet" epic of 2007. At a minimum, he deserves some Hoodoo Gurus. Mike, your mainstream was our .alt. Like many people have said for oh-so-many reasons, Thank God for Australia. Bastard keeps this up, I'm coming for a visit. We can go heckle the All Blacks together or maybe form a Full Contact Madison team.
Every week, it's important that you see at least one video that makes you slap your forehead. Here's bluegrass great Earl Scruggs on Letterman, accompanied by legendary banjo picker Steve Martin. Even Paul Schaffer gets in on the act. People tend to forget that Schaffer is a pretty accomplished musician totally apart from his Letterman gig. And one day, people will realize what a multi-talented SOB Steve Martin is. Man, he never shoulda done that arrow-in-the-head gag. Totally marked him for life.
I usually double up on one artist or another. You may enjoy Earl Scruggs in an earlier life. He used to host a show from the Grand Ol' Opry with Lester Flat. It was classic bluegrass. Bluegrass sometimes gets short shrift when people think about American roots music. Some mournful violin stuff that the damnyankees played and gospel/blues usually headlines. But the fact is that modern jazz and blues came out of the intersection, the crossroads, where bluegrass met black spirituals. And where did bluegrass come from? From the Anglo-Irish underclass that my old man's family came from, the Appalachian and Southeastern clans though, rather than my folks' rural Northeastern and Midwest roots. Too often we ask whether a particular kind of music is cool or whether our friends or the local mass market newspaper would find our taste fashionable. Fuck them. Their opinion doesn't matter. Shut your eyes, listen to the music, and see if it doesn't suck you in. If it does, it's good, you should be happy and listen unashamedly. If you don't like it... well, see you next Friday, I'm sure to have some Rage Against the Machine or Taylor Swift teed up for you.
Even if that isn't quite your cup of tea, I'm betting you notice the virtuousity here. These guys aren't foolin' around; this is good quality music, and in it you can hear little pauses that last a fraction of a note, presaging blues and jazz when our black roots music and white roots music got it on. It's good stuff, it's the part of the culture where most of us come from, like it or not. Might as well reclaim it and be proud.
And while I'm browsing around on YouTube in the bluegrass section - you all remember Hee Haw? It was a corny offshoot of the Grand Old Opry but the performers weren't just some hayseeds, or actors playing hayseeds. They all brought the heat in one way or another. There was an old guy named "Grandpa Jones," the stage name of a Louis Marshall Jones, who was as badass a banjo picker as ever stomped a shit kicker on the floor at a hoedown. In his younger days, he threw down country style, but with punk rock energy, particularly when you consider the pop music of the era. You'll see the Celtic roots in this, and the energy of a culture that was comfortable with itself and un-self conscious. I'm going to leave you with this and a question - how many modern acts do you know in any genre that bring this kind of energy?
[Update: Holy cow. It just occurred to me that many of you may not be familiar with sons of the soil, gentlemen of the hills, boys from the holler. When Grandpa Jones sings about a jug of "that Old Mountain Dew" he isn't talking about the soda that featured .alt sport ads, and which rots your teeth out and makes your visage indistinguishable from a meth addict's. He was referring to moonshine, the fuel that fueled NASCAR. As a damnyankee who had the privilege to attend a fine Suthin' lawr school and drink in the South's many pleasures, my gracious indigenous friends offered me many opportunities to sample the stuff. In my experience, it's one of the finest alcoholic drinks to be had... so long as you have a trusted supplier. It makes you higher than a kite, and goes down like a fine vodka. Great stuff. Of course if you don't have a trusted supplier there's a fair chance it will taste like old car radiator innards, make you blind or just kill you. Caveat imbibor.]
[Updated Update: I was just watching that Grandpa Jones video again, and suddenly it struck me: damned if Grandpa Jones isn't dancing *exactly* like Les Claypool. Like Claypool, who decided to turn his base into a guitar and blend that "lead bass" technique with slap bass - Grandpa Jones was a banjo innovator, playing (or more accurately popularizing) the "clawhammer" technique. If you look at his right hand, he's not picking upwards carefully - his hand is curled up and he's whacking away downward at the strings. Done right, it gives the banjo a sort of raw sound - fiddle versus violin. Think of Pete Townshend of the Who doing a similar thing from time to time, and listen to the sound when he whacks downward on the strings. If The Who play "Won't Get Fooled Again" during the Superbowl halftime show, I bet you see him windmilling... like Grandpa Jones. Clapton and Mark Knopfler play guitar using the same technique. Just goes to show you about the classic country musicians. Les Paul could play anything, and his electric guitar is the classic rock music ax, but he was a country musician.]
But aside from that downside, oh yeah, and the other possible downside, this presents endless comic possibility. Do you realize that I have a perfect out from every staff meeting - "Oh, sorry, I'd love to stick around for next year's budget projections, but the knowledge that there's an outside chance that this may be fucking cancer is just killing me today." Or, "Geez Bob, I'd love to help with that project, but, y'know, there's a slight chance that I may have a rare form of cancer, so I'm going to have to beg off."
On the very positive side, my back feels fricking awesome today for the first time in about three months, I mean really good, as in "what normal people normally feel like," so at least I've got that going for me, which is nice.
Damn. I crack myself up sometimes. It helps that I'm swilling down a triple Manhattan tonight. That Old Grandad looked so appetizing, and so dignified in his little bottle up on the shelf. I love your goatee, Old Grandad... Tell me, Old Grandad, did you shoot any damnyankees during the war?
I was discussing cocktails with this lovely gal I work with. Based on office happy hour performance, in the world of skilled bibulators, she is a decathlete, capable of throwing down in multiple drinking disciplines. So we're talking cocktails, and I'm rattling off the mixers I like - martinis at a medium dry 4 or 5:1 with olives, whisky sours, Rob Roys, and then I said I'm on a Manhattan kick. She starts laughing her ass off. "That's what my grandma used to drink all the time. It's a granny drink." "Yeah," I said. "If granny is a complete fucking alcoholic."
The Manhattan is a very simple drink. You simply take a bit of whiskey, bourbon is the best choice for it, and mix it 2:1 or 3:1 with Sweet Vermouth, some Martini and Rossi in this case. Drop in a splash of cherry juice and a shake or two of Angostura bitters, give the shaker a hearty shake, and pour it into a large brandy snifter atop a couple maraschinos. If you want to nurse it for a while, drop an ice cube or two into the glass. It won't compromise the essential nature of this cocktail - a bracing, astringent + sweet mixture. Yeah, grannies drink it. That's because she started throwing it down that magical night in 1954 when Grandad came back from Korea (pronounced "Core-ee-ah" if you're in that generation) and she hasn't stopped drinking it since. It's a grown-up drink, the same as a proper martini. Do not fuck with the Manhattan. Like your granny - if you grew up lucky - it knows how to use a chainsaw on your happy ass and will lay you low if you do not show it adequate respect. At the same time, like your granny, it goes down easy.
Wait, did I just say that? Yes I did.
I told you, you need to respect the Manhattan. It will make you do things you later regret.
The thing about the Manhattan, is it is perhaps the one cocktail that is both grownup and sophisticated, a drink that must be made with some precision, yet it is also a drink that even the most semi-incompetent bartender has trouble butchering. Two-to-one or three-to-one can be worked out on an inbred's fingers, and still have a finger or so left over. Not so, the martini; you can pollute one of them with bad gin (Seagrams), or bad Sweet Vermouth (Noilly Prat), or because you only have six toes, not seven, and lose track of the gin/vermouth ratio. You can even prostitute the Martini and tie its name to chocolate and lemon and other of the more putrid sorts of apertif. Gack! Can't hardly do that to the simple old Manhattan. Matter of fact, here's a tip that will serve you well. For Dry Vermouth in any mixer, get the French stuff. For Sweet Vermouth in a mixer or as an apertif, get the Italian stuff. And for Dry Vermouth as an apertif, go Italian as well. Team Cinzano, indeed...
Anyhouse, where were we? Oh yeah, So I'm drinking a Manhattan or four, and thinking, gee, maybe I should ask the readers about their favorite mixed drinks. Surely cyclists must love mixed drinks - low carbs, relatively low calories, sophisticated... lotta bang for the buck in them mixers.
So what is it, folks? What's your favorite mixed drink?
Leave me an answer in comments below. But please do answer.
You wouldn't want to deny a drunk dying man his last request.
Oh yeah, I forgot. You're only here for the music. Sorry about the selection. Been a goofy week though.
First, I have to send a song out to everybody who has emailed me or mentioned in comments about their struggles with Old Guy Back, or their issues, or a family member's or friend's issues with the weird spinal cord issues I'm going through. I like how Warren Zevon looked at things and most of you guys will probably relate. He faced some pretty bad suffering in his own life with some bittersweet irony. Dealing with life's little oddities is bittersweet even if you are laughing your ass off; you laugh because it's how you deal with the world, but your own good attitude doesn't erase the shot of fermented lemon juice that life's bartender sometimes serves up.
Now check this out. Everybody wants to know, why BB King sings the blues. Y'know, for a guy who has a terminal case of the blues, old BB always seems happy...
Big Mike gets a special shoutout this week. He's managed to blend sodomy jokes, breaking a rib while falling his obese ass over, and codeine with whiskey in a string of comments that surpasses his comment rate from our memorable "oh shit I'm totally blowing my diet" epic of 2007. At a minimum, he deserves some Hoodoo Gurus. Mike, your mainstream was our .alt. Like many people have said for oh-so-many reasons, Thank God for Australia. Bastard keeps this up, I'm coming for a visit. We can go heckle the All Blacks together or maybe form a Full Contact Madison team.
Every week, it's important that you see at least one video that makes you slap your forehead. Here's bluegrass great Earl Scruggs on Letterman, accompanied by legendary banjo picker Steve Martin. Even Paul Schaffer gets in on the act. People tend to forget that Schaffer is a pretty accomplished musician totally apart from his Letterman gig. And one day, people will realize what a multi-talented SOB Steve Martin is. Man, he never shoulda done that arrow-in-the-head gag. Totally marked him for life.
I usually double up on one artist or another. You may enjoy Earl Scruggs in an earlier life. He used to host a show from the Grand Ol' Opry with Lester Flat. It was classic bluegrass. Bluegrass sometimes gets short shrift when people think about American roots music. Some mournful violin stuff that the damnyankees played and gospel/blues usually headlines. But the fact is that modern jazz and blues came out of the intersection, the crossroads, where bluegrass met black spirituals. And where did bluegrass come from? From the Anglo-Irish underclass that my old man's family came from, the Appalachian and Southeastern clans though, rather than my folks' rural Northeastern and Midwest roots. Too often we ask whether a particular kind of music is cool or whether our friends or the local mass market newspaper would find our taste fashionable. Fuck them. Their opinion doesn't matter. Shut your eyes, listen to the music, and see if it doesn't suck you in. If it does, it's good, you should be happy and listen unashamedly. If you don't like it... well, see you next Friday, I'm sure to have some Rage Against the Machine or Taylor Swift teed up for you.
Even if that isn't quite your cup of tea, I'm betting you notice the virtuousity here. These guys aren't foolin' around; this is good quality music, and in it you can hear little pauses that last a fraction of a note, presaging blues and jazz when our black roots music and white roots music got it on. It's good stuff, it's the part of the culture where most of us come from, like it or not. Might as well reclaim it and be proud.
And while I'm browsing around on YouTube in the bluegrass section - you all remember Hee Haw? It was a corny offshoot of the Grand Old Opry but the performers weren't just some hayseeds, or actors playing hayseeds. They all brought the heat in one way or another. There was an old guy named "Grandpa Jones," the stage name of a Louis Marshall Jones, who was as badass a banjo picker as ever stomped a shit kicker on the floor at a hoedown. In his younger days, he threw down country style, but with punk rock energy, particularly when you consider the pop music of the era. You'll see the Celtic roots in this, and the energy of a culture that was comfortable with itself and un-self conscious. I'm going to leave you with this and a question - how many modern acts do you know in any genre that bring this kind of energy?
[Update: Holy cow. It just occurred to me that many of you may not be familiar with sons of the soil, gentlemen of the hills, boys from the holler. When Grandpa Jones sings about a jug of "that Old Mountain Dew" he isn't talking about the soda that featured .alt sport ads, and which rots your teeth out and makes your visage indistinguishable from a meth addict's. He was referring to moonshine, the fuel that fueled NASCAR. As a damnyankee who had the privilege to attend a fine Suthin' lawr school and drink in the South's many pleasures, my gracious indigenous friends offered me many opportunities to sample the stuff. In my experience, it's one of the finest alcoholic drinks to be had... so long as you have a trusted supplier. It makes you higher than a kite, and goes down like a fine vodka. Great stuff. Of course if you don't have a trusted supplier there's a fair chance it will taste like old car radiator innards, make you blind or just kill you. Caveat imbibor.]
[Updated Update: I was just watching that Grandpa Jones video again, and suddenly it struck me: damned if Grandpa Jones isn't dancing *exactly* like Les Claypool. Like Claypool, who decided to turn his base into a guitar and blend that "lead bass" technique with slap bass - Grandpa Jones was a banjo innovator, playing (or more accurately popularizing) the "clawhammer" technique. If you look at his right hand, he's not picking upwards carefully - his hand is curled up and he's whacking away downward at the strings. Done right, it gives the banjo a sort of raw sound - fiddle versus violin. Think of Pete Townshend of the Who doing a similar thing from time to time, and listen to the sound when he whacks downward on the strings. If The Who play "Won't Get Fooled Again" during the Superbowl halftime show, I bet you see him windmilling... like Grandpa Jones. Clapton and Mark Knopfler play guitar using the same technique. Just goes to show you about the classic country musicians. Les Paul could play anything, and his electric guitar is the classic rock music ax, but he was a country musician.]
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
On Grips and Coming to Them
It was fun getting an MRI yesterday morning. It was an old school MRI tube, just tiny, like being inside of a toilet paper roll. My nose was about an inch from the top, and my shoulders were scrunched in on the sides. So how do I react in those circumstances? Bitch? Get claustrophobic and panicky? Try to escape? Hells no. I took a nap. The buzzing was actually quite soothing. There was no jazz since the tube was so damn small, that there wasn't enough room for headphones. Seriously, you people think I was exaggerating about it being small. There are newborn babies who spent the last 9 months in roomier quarters than I was in.
So what results? I don't know... what does it mean when the doctor starts scratching his head?
A disc is bulging between L5 and S1. Which totally doesn't line up with the leg pain I had, which would have indicated a serious problem between L4 and L5. So the original diagnosis that a Physician's Assistant gave me - some kind of an unspecified lumbar spinal problem, combined with a torn muscle or strain somewhere in my hip/pelvis - may have been basically accurate on the whole. Sacroiliac sprain perhaps? Turns out the L4/L5 junction is in pretty durned good shape other than a little arthur itis, so Beth Mason owes me a pack of Gu when she redeploys stateside. Then again, the L4/L5 problem could have been caused by the next disc down my back going AWOL so maybe she doesn't. As for what is really going on down there in my mildly sore, occasionally stabby lower back, according to my doctor... "well... that's hard to say."
Shit. I could have said that and saved the $20 co-pay.
An incidental thing they discovered on X-rays, and confirmed with the MRI, however, isn't quite as funny. Not in that sense anyhow.
The thoracic (upper back) MRI showed something really weird, some damaged vertebrae (I knew about that) along with some serious thickening of the spinal cord. According to the general practitioner, that is "probably nothing but the radiologists are really worried about some rare conditions relating to tumors and whatnot, so you need another MRI, with contrast."
I think "with contrast" means either that the MRI is taken by an African-American radiology tech who looks glaringly handsome and tanned compared to my now pasty white body, or maybe they shoot me full of iron filings or radioactive beaver dung or whatever so that the fiendish condition that is bothering my upper back (nothing is bothering it... seriously, doc. My upper back is fine...) shows up with greater clarity. So I can start physiotherapy for the lower back, and there's a visit to a neurologist coming up to get a better diagnosis of top and bottom, along with another nap in the local MRI Womb.
So I went home after the consultation to check out what kind of tumors are associated with a swollen spinal cord.
Man, was that ever a fuckin' mistake.
The tenor of the discussion about spinal cord tumors, even on the most sober of medical websites, runs thusly:
Oh, it's nothing. Tumors on the spinal cord are rare. Having one is like being hit by lightning. Even if you have one, it's probably benign, so don't sweat it. No biggy. But if it's not benign, well, that's like being hit by lightning again, and *nobody* ever gets hit twice. Even if it isn't benign...
So I mulled that over for a little while, and tried to write about it yesterday with no success. And I tried a little this morning while my trip to work was delayed by snow. That didn't work. It took me all day to get my head around it, really. And here's what I figured out.
They always talk about how the first big stage of anything horrible in life (someone's shocking death, finding out you have cancer, running out of beer during the Superbowl) is met with denial, then rage, and after that acceptance.
But what if your response is bewilderment? What if you're bewildered, and laughing? Nobody talks about that.
And it's how I feel. The odds are really good this is nothing. But even if it isn't... this is just weirder than weird. How... amusing. How odd. I'm there in the tube - with a really warm blanket over my bare legs, damn that was a cozy blanket - thinking about rehabbing my back and whether I need to consider getting a full boing mountain bike in a few months, with a suspension set up for a guy who, even if perfectly thin, is way too heavy for normal rear suspension geometry. What tires will I run, Ti or something else, wonder how long it'll take and what core training lies between here and there, how much I need to fall back in love with road riding to work this weight off and diet and... zzzzzz.
Then a few hours later I'm reading about all these insanely weird cancers and bizzaro tumors and shit. And it's not self-inflicted, I'm not like some med student making up symptoms that I'm studying, this is something the radiologists are legitimately concerned about, enough that my doc is willing to argue with my insurance company to get me another $5k MRI.
I'm not mad. I'm not in denial. I'm just bemused. This is *so* weird. What the fuck...
Now here's the funny thing about that. In my life as a cop and soldier, I got to know some dead people pretty well. You do, that's the nature of those professions, if you're working them in interesting places. Some dead people, I met at crime scenes, a few I knew prior to their exit off life's little stage. What I noticed about their appearance was that sometimes people die pretty badly, you see them all upset looking and angry or horrified. That's rage or terror. You really remember the terrified and angry ones... they are pissed, and they did not go gentle into that bad mother of a night. Other times, you see people who died pretty happy. They have a look on their face like they just got a back rub. They're at one with the universe, made their peace with God or whomever, and they're a picture of acceptance. Quitters!
And sometimes, you see somebody who went down bemused, this quizzical look on their face, like "Oh, what the fuck. Hah. Amazing. Was I just shot in the head? Fuck yeah I was! Am I shitting my pants? Guess I am. Hot damn! Hey, why is my arm doing a Hitler salute? Guess I'm dying. Funnnny." You probably think I'm kidding about this but animals die weird, and when you peel off the higher consciousness and the Brooks Brothers suits and eternal soul and whatnot, we're basically high order apes, with all the physical possibilities that opens up for us. As the Pythons sang in "Life of Brian,"
So I'm not in an enormous crisis state here. I'm probably okay medically. It's overwhelmingly likely that I have a mildly messed up spine with weird lumps that makes chain smoking radiologists nervous, like a lot of things I do probably would if they knew about them. (You were catching air? On a bicycle?) But even if I'm not okay, well, what the fuck. I have tried to anticipate a lot of other things in my life, including my own demise (several times) and I've been utterly wrong about what would happen next. Gotta take what comes and don't bother trying to game the system. It doesn't work. You'll only be disappointed (angry dead guy) or give up on it (pacific dead guy). I don't dig either option.
Being where I am, doing what I'm doing... hah! This is all a total surprise to me. Unlike my amazing predictive superpower as a Human Crystal Ball of a lawyer, I had no idea my own life would turn out this way. Shit, I didn't even know I had superpowers until maybe 5 years ago. How funny is it that you don't recognize your most essential professional ability until you're 15 years into your professional life? As the Great Man once said, "What a maroon... what a gibroni."
So if I'm struck with a disease so rare that it's only ever been found in inbred mutant pygmies? I guess I'll deal with it, and see if I can change the "race" box in my personnel record at work to "Pygmy-American." Then then I'll laugh my ass off over the irony of it.
Forest Gump was full of shit. Life isn't like a box of chocolates; you do in fact know what you are going to get: surprised. Surprise is the constant. Whether you want to deny the weird shit life throws at you and be angry, accept it like a sheep and give in, or go along laughing is your own damn problem. All life really promises you is the opportunity to make the decision who you want to be. That is in your control. The rest of it... eh, not so much.
Me, I know the last joke is on me. So have been about 20% of the jokes in the middle. But I don't care. This trip is going to be better if we can spend it in the back of the bus, laughing our asses off until we pull a stomach muscle, and if somebody pees their pants or blows Pepsi out their nose, we'll laugh at that too. And if the Eternal Coachman chooses to ride with us? Well, fuck him, if he didn't bring some beer, and a good joke about this priest, a rabbi, and a stripper who go into a bar... Sure, we all get a little down at times but I don't have room for you if you're going to stay down. That includes Reapers, both of the grim and melancholy varieties.
So what results? I don't know... what does it mean when the doctor starts scratching his head?
A disc is bulging between L5 and S1. Which totally doesn't line up with the leg pain I had, which would have indicated a serious problem between L4 and L5. So the original diagnosis that a Physician's Assistant gave me - some kind of an unspecified lumbar spinal problem, combined with a torn muscle or strain somewhere in my hip/pelvis - may have been basically accurate on the whole. Sacroiliac sprain perhaps? Turns out the L4/L5 junction is in pretty durned good shape other than a little arthur itis, so Beth Mason owes me a pack of Gu when she redeploys stateside. Then again, the L4/L5 problem could have been caused by the next disc down my back going AWOL so maybe she doesn't. As for what is really going on down there in my mildly sore, occasionally stabby lower back, according to my doctor... "well... that's hard to say."
Shit. I could have said that and saved the $20 co-pay.
An incidental thing they discovered on X-rays, and confirmed with the MRI, however, isn't quite as funny. Not in that sense anyhow.
The thoracic (upper back) MRI showed something really weird, some damaged vertebrae (I knew about that) along with some serious thickening of the spinal cord. According to the general practitioner, that is "probably nothing but the radiologists are really worried about some rare conditions relating to tumors and whatnot, so you need another MRI, with contrast."
I think "with contrast" means either that the MRI is taken by an African-American radiology tech who looks glaringly handsome and tanned compared to my now pasty white body, or maybe they shoot me full of iron filings or radioactive beaver dung or whatever so that the fiendish condition that is bothering my upper back (nothing is bothering it... seriously, doc. My upper back is fine...) shows up with greater clarity. So I can start physiotherapy for the lower back, and there's a visit to a neurologist coming up to get a better diagnosis of top and bottom, along with another nap in the local MRI Womb.
So I went home after the consultation to check out what kind of tumors are associated with a swollen spinal cord.
Man, was that ever a fuckin' mistake.
The tenor of the discussion about spinal cord tumors, even on the most sober of medical websites, runs thusly:
Oh, it's nothing. Tumors on the spinal cord are rare. Having one is like being hit by lightning. Even if you have one, it's probably benign, so don't sweat it. No biggy. But if it's not benign, well, that's like being hit by lightning again, and *nobody* ever gets hit twice. Even if it isn't benign...
DIE! DIE! IT'S THE WORST SARCOMA YOU EVER HEARD OF WITH A -10% SURVIVAL RATE AFTER 5 MINUTES AND THEY NEED TO DETONATE AN A-BOMB OVER YOUR BACK TWICE HOURLY FOR RADIATION TREATMENTS! I'M WEEPING PROFUSELY FOR YOU EVEN THOUGH I'M MERELY THE MERCK MANUAL CONVERTED INTO HTML...Okay. So nothing is confirmed, but you read an ordinarily dry-as-dust medical manual entries filled with lurid, horrifying shit, it sort of gets a man's mind to thinking... what if it is that?
So I mulled that over for a little while, and tried to write about it yesterday with no success. And I tried a little this morning while my trip to work was delayed by snow. That didn't work. It took me all day to get my head around it, really. And here's what I figured out.
They always talk about how the first big stage of anything horrible in life (someone's shocking death, finding out you have cancer, running out of beer during the Superbowl) is met with denial, then rage, and after that acceptance.
But what if your response is bewilderment? What if you're bewildered, and laughing? Nobody talks about that.
And it's how I feel. The odds are really good this is nothing. But even if it isn't... this is just weirder than weird. How... amusing. How odd. I'm there in the tube - with a really warm blanket over my bare legs, damn that was a cozy blanket - thinking about rehabbing my back and whether I need to consider getting a full boing mountain bike in a few months, with a suspension set up for a guy who, even if perfectly thin, is way too heavy for normal rear suspension geometry. What tires will I run, Ti or something else, wonder how long it'll take and what core training lies between here and there, how much I need to fall back in love with road riding to work this weight off and diet and... zzzzzz.
Then a few hours later I'm reading about all these insanely weird cancers and bizzaro tumors and shit. And it's not self-inflicted, I'm not like some med student making up symptoms that I'm studying, this is something the radiologists are legitimately concerned about, enough that my doc is willing to argue with my insurance company to get me another $5k MRI.
I'm not mad. I'm not in denial. I'm just bemused. This is *so* weird. What the fuck...
Now here's the funny thing about that. In my life as a cop and soldier, I got to know some dead people pretty well. You do, that's the nature of those professions, if you're working them in interesting places. Some dead people, I met at crime scenes, a few I knew prior to their exit off life's little stage. What I noticed about their appearance was that sometimes people die pretty badly, you see them all upset looking and angry or horrified. That's rage or terror. You really remember the terrified and angry ones... they are pissed, and they did not go gentle into that bad mother of a night. Other times, you see people who died pretty happy. They have a look on their face like they just got a back rub. They're at one with the universe, made their peace with God or whomever, and they're a picture of acceptance. Quitters!
And sometimes, you see somebody who went down bemused, this quizzical look on their face, like "Oh, what the fuck. Hah. Amazing. Was I just shot in the head? Fuck yeah I was! Am I shitting my pants? Guess I am. Hot damn! Hey, why is my arm doing a Hitler salute? Guess I'm dying. Funnnny." You probably think I'm kidding about this but animals die weird, and when you peel off the higher consciousness and the Brooks Brothers suits and eternal soul and whatnot, we're basically high order apes, with all the physical possibilities that opens up for us. As the Pythons sang in "Life of Brian,"
Life's a bowl of shit,We all get to grips with things in different ways. Life isn't that bad but from here in the (hopefully) middle points, one notices that it is rounded with a dirt nap on one end, and a hard slap on the ass on the other end of it, and a long series of slaps to the back of your head, emotional upsets, kicks in the ass, hard falls on your face... and on and on and on. You can take all those pratfalls seriously and be angry, you can go all Zen and accept them and let life kick your ass, or you can see life for what it is... a long, not particularly well-produced Three Stooges episode. Like the Curly Joe ones - a little tired, seemingly artificial melodrama creating essential crises in the middle, some comedic gems here and there, and mildly amusing overall. That's how it looks to me, most days anyhow.
When you look at it.
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show,
Keep 'em laughing as you go,
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
So always look on the bright side of life...
So I'm not in an enormous crisis state here. I'm probably okay medically. It's overwhelmingly likely that I have a mildly messed up spine with weird lumps that makes chain smoking radiologists nervous, like a lot of things I do probably would if they knew about them. (You were catching air? On a bicycle?) But even if I'm not okay, well, what the fuck. I have tried to anticipate a lot of other things in my life, including my own demise (several times) and I've been utterly wrong about what would happen next. Gotta take what comes and don't bother trying to game the system. It doesn't work. You'll only be disappointed (angry dead guy) or give up on it (pacific dead guy). I don't dig either option.
Being where I am, doing what I'm doing... hah! This is all a total surprise to me. Unlike my amazing predictive superpower as a Human Crystal Ball of a lawyer, I had no idea my own life would turn out this way. Shit, I didn't even know I had superpowers until maybe 5 years ago. How funny is it that you don't recognize your most essential professional ability until you're 15 years into your professional life? As the Great Man once said, "What a maroon... what a gibroni."
So if I'm struck with a disease so rare that it's only ever been found in inbred mutant pygmies? I guess I'll deal with it, and see if I can change the "race" box in my personnel record at work to "Pygmy-American." Then then I'll laugh my ass off over the irony of it.
Forest Gump was full of shit. Life isn't like a box of chocolates; you do in fact know what you are going to get: surprised. Surprise is the constant. Whether you want to deny the weird shit life throws at you and be angry, accept it like a sheep and give in, or go along laughing is your own damn problem. All life really promises you is the opportunity to make the decision who you want to be. That is in your control. The rest of it... eh, not so much.
Me, I know the last joke is on me. So have been about 20% of the jokes in the middle. But I don't care. This trip is going to be better if we can spend it in the back of the bus, laughing our asses off until we pull a stomach muscle, and if somebody pees their pants or blows Pepsi out their nose, we'll laugh at that too. And if the Eternal Coachman chooses to ride with us? Well, fuck him, if he didn't bring some beer, and a good joke about this priest, a rabbi, and a stripper who go into a bar... Sure, we all get a little down at times but I don't have room for you if you're going to stay down. That includes Reapers, both of the grim and melancholy varieties.
Circling The Wagons
Chris Berman notes that "nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills," but the truth is that nobody in pro sports circles the wagons like the agent/attorney/public affairs firm surrounding a marquis NBA player. We see a little wagon circling when a pro cyclist gets popped for drugs, but the posse that protected Floyd Landis was the exception, not the rule. The lame excuses are amateurish, the public image rehabilitation attempts lame and erratic, and the whole operation generally lacks polish. I mean, Tornado Tom's response to charges of reckless driving while stoned on coke and dating a 14 year-old was along the lines of, "well, I only told people we were dating." What?
On the other hand, Gilbert Arenas, the Washington Wizards All Star who was suspended by the NBA for threatening to shoot teammate Javaris Crittenton over gambling debts (complete with pistol brandishing) has a rehabilitation op-ed in today’s Washington Post. Gil (or really the company that is Gilbert Arenas, Inc., shows us how it's done today.
The thing is, you know damn well the athlete has little to do with writing these apologies, as little to do with the rehabilitation of the public image, as he had to do with creating the public image in the first place. I always love these pro athlete apologies because they have to be close enough to the truth to avoid being *completely* laughable, yet they have to be polished. Because they have to be semi-plausible, they need to contain some of the Player’s Very Own Thoughts™ in them. But most top pro athletes don't appear capable of the rhetoric and wordsmithing necessary - and perhaps of the underlying thought - to produce a top flight apology / rehab plea.
A few Friends of the Rouleur are, or have been, sports agents to the High and Mighty. Most pro athletes are good enough folks, many like to party, but they aren't lunatics. But a handful of them - the coach chokers, the murderers, and some random lunatic superstars - are not good people and they present a constant challenge to their handlers.
When you see an essay like Gil's, I figure it was thoroughly worked over by a team of lawyers, agents and press consultants to ensure it meets three competing needs: 1) taint the jury pool in favor of the athlete; 2) provide the franchise with a favorable excuse if salary cap or playing field considerations prevent trade; and, 3) start the player’s rebirth as a marketing stalwart by getting the fans to think better of him.
Naturally, the only part that stokes my prurient interests me is what the player said to his lawyer, and how that becomes the basis for the op-ed. Here’s how I envision Gilbert Arenas’ essay writing session occurred.
Lawyer: Okay Gil, we need to get this right. I know you want to play for the Lakers or the new-look Clips, but they might not want you after this. Kobe being found not guilty of rape is a little different from you pleading guilty to threatening teammates with loaded guns, then failing to take the controversy seriously after the Commissioner warned you. Everybody now has it in for you, so we have to come up with a lifeline, alright?
Arenas: [Makes firing pistol gesture]. Bang! Bang!
Lawyer: Okay Gil, funny. I get it. But we can’t use the “I’m just a joker” excuse any more. Your sentencing hearing is in a month. You got any ideas what we can do to get on the right side of this town?
Arenas: That's going to be tough. That Adrian Fenty sure hates guns. I thought the brother was cooler than that.
Lawyer: Well, the Supreme Court kicked his ass on that last year. And there is a little bit of a crime problem in many parts of the city, involving crimes other than those committed by NBA and NFL players, hard though that may be to believe. So gun crime may be a bit of a sore spot with him. The Washington Post – that’s a newspaper – they actually wrote something about how you might want to consider getting involved in anti-gun activism as a way of making amends.
Arenas: You mean there maybe is a way to get a deal for LA? Hey, that sounds good. I’m down.
Lawyer: Okay, how ‘bout we start with this:
Lawyer: Okay. Here’s the tough part. You’re going to have to admit that you did something wrong. I know it’s tough – you admitted doing something wrong just the other month when you pled guilty, but believe me, the way to get people to take you back after this is to go around like somebody hit your dog, sad face and all. Do that for a while, and they’ll take you back. “Oh, look, Gil feels *so* sorry… shoot, we should forgive him.”
Arenas: Okay. How about we say this. “I fucked up, people. I’m all sorry an’ shit.”
Lawyer: Excellent! That’s excellent stuff. Let me just rephrase that a tiny bit.
Lawyer: Uh, Gil, that’s Mr. Leonsis. Unlike you, he actually writes his own stuff. I’d recommend you keep your mouth shut about him if you can’t say anything good. He may be your boss in a few months. Plus the fans in this town *love* him for some reason, and he doesn’t mind trading beloved stars for draft picks.
Arenas: Okay. So what else we got to say? We done yet?
Lawyer: Almost. You need to say why you feel sorry.
Arenas: That’s obvious. This is costing me money. Serious money. Not like one of them $10,000 fines the League is handin’ out all the time. And I don't want to go to prison. You know what happens there, right?
Lawyer: Okay, but you need to say why you feel sorry besides the fact it’s costing you money.
Arenas: Sure. That mofa Crittenton crazy. He coulda been shootin’ my ass. Come to think of it, when I talked to David Stern, I thought he was going to be shootin’ my ass too.
Lawyer: Fear of being shot by others. I think we can work with that. Let’s try this:
Lawyer: Let’s keep on task, Gil.
Arenas: Why the talk about the kids though?
Lawyer: Well, that was my personal touch. You know how you are always talking to the management team about how you love the young ladies?
Arenas: Awww, yeah…
Lawyer: I figure if you say you are doing it all for the kids, people will like you more. It’s not untrue... you just happen to normally be speaking about 18-21 year-old female kids, who work out regularly, have high cheekbones and great teeth, and maybe just a little junk in the trunk.
Arenas: I like how you think. What am I paying you?
Lawyer: Not enough. But plenty. And more if you get that trade to LA. But I think we need more about the kids. I like where this is going. You got anything else to say about the kids?
Arenas: Well, this is damn sure going to make it hard to get dates if I’m going to prison. The ladies are going to be missing Gil-Gil, for sure. Matter of fact, I’ve been a little distracted when I’m with the ladies lately, if you know what I mean…
Lawyer: Hmmm… wow. That's really tough. How about if we talk about the effect this incident has had on "the kids?" How does this sound?
Lawyer: Okay, that’s good. You may want to quit talking about yourself in the third person in public. Y'know, calling yourself "Gil". Just say "I". Let’s add a little more about the kids, okay. How about,
Lawyer: Okay, so what are you going to do if you get through this with your fortune and career still intact?
Arenas: Tell you one thing, I’m going to do better with the ladies. That’s for damn sure. Nothin' like facing two years in the Federal Men's Only Club to make you appreciate the ladies. Man, I feel down after missing 7 consecutive three point attempts, then I look up in the stands and see a hotty in my jersey and smiling at me... damn!
Lawyer: Okay… we need to say something else about the kids then. How’s this:
Lawyer: Okay, we’re going to lay it on thick with the kids and finish strong. If you have a good go-to move, you use it, right?
Lawyer: Okay, Gil, now focus. You have to tell me what you’ve learned from this incident. Something we can use to give this op-ed some punch, and to show you’ve really learned, and won’t make this mistake again.
Arenas: Yeah, that’s simple. Don’t gamble with Javaris Crittenton. That mofa’s crazy! He’s nothin’ but trouble, and he’s violent too.
Lawyer: Okay, okay… I can work with that. Violence and trouble. You want to avoid that in the future. Then here’s how we end the op-ed:
Lawyer: You bet your sweet ass it will. Hey, you got some glaucoma medicine I could borrow? All this thinkin' is makin' my eyes hurt.
On the other hand, Gilbert Arenas, the Washington Wizards All Star who was suspended by the NBA for threatening to shoot teammate Javaris Crittenton over gambling debts (complete with pistol brandishing) has a rehabilitation op-ed in today’s Washington Post. Gil (or really the company that is Gilbert Arenas, Inc., shows us how it's done today.
The thing is, you know damn well the athlete has little to do with writing these apologies, as little to do with the rehabilitation of the public image, as he had to do with creating the public image in the first place. I always love these pro athlete apologies because they have to be close enough to the truth to avoid being *completely* laughable, yet they have to be polished. Because they have to be semi-plausible, they need to contain some of the Player’s Very Own Thoughts™ in them. But most top pro athletes don't appear capable of the rhetoric and wordsmithing necessary - and perhaps of the underlying thought - to produce a top flight apology / rehab plea.
A few Friends of the Rouleur are, or have been, sports agents to the High and Mighty. Most pro athletes are good enough folks, many like to party, but they aren't lunatics. But a handful of them - the coach chokers, the murderers, and some random lunatic superstars - are not good people and they present a constant challenge to their handlers.
When you see an essay like Gil's, I figure it was thoroughly worked over by a team of lawyers, agents and press consultants to ensure it meets three competing needs: 1) taint the jury pool in favor of the athlete; 2) provide the franchise with a favorable excuse if salary cap or playing field considerations prevent trade; and, 3) start the player’s rebirth as a marketing stalwart by getting the fans to think better of him.
Naturally, the only part that stokes my prurient interests me is what the player said to his lawyer, and how that becomes the basis for the op-ed. Here’s how I envision Gilbert Arenas’ essay writing session occurred.
Lawyer: Okay Gil, we need to get this right. I know you want to play for the Lakers or the new-look Clips, but they might not want you after this. Kobe being found not guilty of rape is a little different from you pleading guilty to threatening teammates with loaded guns, then failing to take the controversy seriously after the Commissioner warned you. Everybody now has it in for you, so we have to come up with a lifeline, alright?
Arenas: [Makes firing pistol gesture]. Bang! Bang!
Lawyer: Okay Gil, funny. I get it. But we can’t use the “I’m just a joker” excuse any more. Your sentencing hearing is in a month. You got any ideas what we can do to get on the right side of this town?
Arenas: That's going to be tough. That Adrian Fenty sure hates guns. I thought the brother was cooler than that.
Lawyer: Well, the Supreme Court kicked his ass on that last year. And there is a little bit of a crime problem in many parts of the city, involving crimes other than those committed by NBA and NFL players, hard though that may be to believe. So gun crime may be a bit of a sore spot with him. The Washington Post – that’s a newspaper – they actually wrote something about how you might want to consider getting involved in anti-gun activism as a way of making amends.
Arenas: You mean there maybe is a way to get a deal for LA? Hey, that sounds good. I’m down.
Lawyer: Okay, how ‘bout we start with this:
The Post suggested on Dec. 31 that I send a message to young fans "about guns being neither glamorous nor desirable." I am grateful for the opportunity to do something good in the face of the very bad situation I created.Arenas: Yeah, that’s right. I’m happy as a mofa if I can keep getting’ paid, maybe get traded to LA. So what's the Post? Is that a sports paper about centers like Brendan and Shaq? Ah, nevermind. You just keep goin’.
Lawyer: Okay. Here’s the tough part. You’re going to have to admit that you did something wrong. I know it’s tough – you admitted doing something wrong just the other month when you pled guilty, but believe me, the way to get people to take you back after this is to go around like somebody hit your dog, sad face and all. Do that for a while, and they’ll take you back. “Oh, look, Gil feels *so* sorry… shoot, we should forgive him.”
Arenas: Okay. How about we say this. “I fucked up, people. I’m all sorry an’ shit.”
Lawyer: Excellent! That’s excellent stuff. Let me just rephrase that a tiny bit.
I have done a number of things wrong recently. I violated D.C. gun laws and the NBA's ban on firearms on league property, and I damaged the image of the NBA and its players. I reacted badly to the aftermath and made fun of inaccurate media reports, which looked as though I was making light of a serious situation. And I gave Commissioner David Stern good reason to suspend me from the game, which put my teammates in a tough position and let down our fans and Mrs. Irene Pollin, the widow of longtime Wizards owner Abe Pollin.Arenas: Man, you make everything sound good. Hey, does that Irene still own the team? I thought that fat little dude with the goatee bought it. Funny, I hear he’s got a blog just like me and he emails fans. Wonder who writes his.
Lawyer: Uh, Gil, that’s Mr. Leonsis. Unlike you, he actually writes his own stuff. I’d recommend you keep your mouth shut about him if you can’t say anything good. He may be your boss in a few months. Plus the fans in this town *love* him for some reason, and he doesn’t mind trading beloved stars for draft picks.
Arenas: Okay. So what else we got to say? We done yet?
Lawyer: Almost. You need to say why you feel sorry.
Arenas: That’s obvious. This is costing me money. Serious money. Not like one of them $10,000 fines the League is handin’ out all the time. And I don't want to go to prison. You know what happens there, right?
Lawyer: Okay, but you need to say why you feel sorry besides the fact it’s costing you money.
Arenas: Sure. That mofa Crittenton crazy. He coulda been shootin’ my ass. Come to think of it, when I talked to David Stern, I thought he was going to be shootin’ my ass too.
Lawyer: Fear of being shot by others. I think we can work with that. Let’s try this:
I understand the importance of teaching nonviolence to kids in today's world. Guns and violence are serious problems, not joking matters -- a lesson that's been brought home to me over the past few weeks. I thought about this when I pleaded guilty as charged in court and when I accepted my NBA suspension without challenge. That message of nonviolence will be front and center as I try to rebuild my relationship with young people in the D.C. area. I know that won't happen overnight, and that it will happen only if I show through my actions that I am truly sorry and have learned from my mistakes. If I do that, then hopefully youngsters will learn from the serious mistakes I made with guns and not make any of their own.Arenas: [Makes pistol shooting gesture again] That’s magic, lawyer man. Magic. Hey, you know if Orlando needs a small forward?
Lawyer: Let’s keep on task, Gil.
Arenas: Why the talk about the kids though?
Lawyer: Well, that was my personal touch. You know how you are always talking to the management team about how you love the young ladies?
Arenas: Awww, yeah…
Lawyer: I figure if you say you are doing it all for the kids, people will like you more. It’s not untrue... you just happen to normally be speaking about 18-21 year-old female kids, who work out regularly, have high cheekbones and great teeth, and maybe just a little junk in the trunk.
Arenas: I like how you think. What am I paying you?
Lawyer: Not enough. But plenty. And more if you get that trade to LA. But I think we need more about the kids. I like where this is going. You got anything else to say about the kids?
Arenas: Well, this is damn sure going to make it hard to get dates if I’m going to prison. The ladies are going to be missing Gil-Gil, for sure. Matter of fact, I’ve been a little distracted when I’m with the ladies lately, if you know what I mean…
Lawyer: Hmmm… wow. That's really tough. How about if we talk about the effect this incident has had on "the kids?" How does this sound?
I am trying hard to right my wrongs. The one that will be hardest to make right is the effect my actions have had on kids who see NBA players as role models. Professional athletes have a duty to act responsibly and to understand the influence we have on all those kids who look up to us. I failed to live up to that responsibility when I broke the law and set such a bad example. Washington's children, parents and fans all deserve better from me, especially after all the kindness they've shown me over the years.Arenas: Hah. Yeah. You're right. It set’s a bad example when an NBA All Star has to be munchin’ on Viagra the way the fans are munchin’ on Esskay hot dogs. This is makin’ Gilbert sad, and Gilbert don’t like bein’ sad.
Lawyer: Okay, that’s good. You may want to quit talking about yourself in the third person in public. Y'know, calling yourself "Gil". Just say "I". Let’s add a little more about the kids, okay. How about,
While I regret a lot about this incident, letting the kids down is my biggest regret. I love the time I spend with the kids here in the District, and it means a lot to me whenever I can help lift their spirits or inspire them, especially kids who have difficult lives.Arenas: You got that right.
Lawyer: Okay, so what are you going to do if you get through this with your fortune and career still intact?
Arenas: Tell you one thing, I’m going to do better with the ladies. That’s for damn sure. Nothin' like facing two years in the Federal Men's Only Club to make you appreciate the ladies. Man, I feel down after missing 7 consecutive three point attempts, then I look up in the stands and see a hotty in my jersey and smiling at me... damn!
Lawyer: Okay… we need to say something else about the kids then. How’s this:
Last Tuesday, I wrote a letter to students in D.C. schools that was also about owning up to my mistakes. I said that I lost sight of the lesson I learned from Abe Pollin about how the responsibility to be a good role model comes along with the opportunity he gave me. I reiterate now the pledge I made to those students: that this is a responsibility I am not going to walk away from, that I will choose more wisely in the future and do my best to help guide children into brighter futures.Arenas: That’s great! I can’t say enough about how much I like the young women. The little dudes are cool too, I guess…
There have been few bright spots for me these past few weeks. But one came the night I played my last game this season at Verizon Center. I saw young fans were still showing up wearing my jersey. That meant more to me than I can say.
Lawyer: Okay, we’re going to lay it on thick with the kids and finish strong. If you have a good go-to move, you use it, right?
The relationship I have with young fans is very important to me. I realize now how easily I can damage it. I have to earn that respect and work to deserve it each and every day. I plan to do that work by partnering with public officials and community groups to teach kids to avoid trouble and learn from their mistakes, to strive for success by working hard and persevering, and to try to make the right choices.Arenas: Man, you crack me up.
Lawyer: Okay, Gil, now focus. You have to tell me what you’ve learned from this incident. Something we can use to give this op-ed some punch, and to show you’ve really learned, and won’t make this mistake again.
Arenas: Yeah, that’s simple. Don’t gamble with Javaris Crittenton. That mofa’s crazy! He’s nothin’ but trouble, and he’s violent too.
Lawyer: Okay, okay… I can work with that. Violence and trouble. You want to avoid that in the future. Then here’s how we end the op-ed:
Some people may not forgive me for what I've done. But if I help steer even just one young person away from violence and trouble, then I'll once again feel that I'm living up to Abe Pollin's legacy and to the responsibility I owe the kids of the District.Arenas: You think it'll work?
Lawyer: You bet your sweet ass it will. Hey, you got some glaucoma medicine I could borrow? All this thinkin' is makin' my eyes hurt.
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