Clublife

Car

2009-10-30T05:07:00.000-04:00

The night flies past too quickly on the LIE – Bayside, Elmhurst, the World’s Fair, an adventitious smattering of businesses and churches with signs in Korean. Asian Christianity intrigues me. Korean Baptist. Laotian Presbyterian. Cambodian Congregational. Japanese Pentecostal.

Lanes are changed. I’m in the back seat of a Cadillac Eldorado, donated to Gerry by the family of a priest – don’t know the relationship there – and peering into the pocket sewn into the backside of the passenger seat. I reach in, thumb tucked between my middle and index finger, and roll back and forth the sand that’s caught in the seam at the bottom as Queens – service road Queens – trundles (trundles?) past in a whirl of shit nobody can understand. A borough without a fucking face.

“I gotta piss.”

Gerry drives close. He’s one of those guys who need to be right up the ass of the guy in front of him. He doesn’t complain, doesn’t pound on the wheel and “fuck, fuck, fuck” the way I do. He just sits there, like he’s drafting in the fucking Tour de France. I can’t do that. Car in front of me hits his brakes, fucked if I’m not slamming on mine, and fucked if I’m not keeping my distance. Crack the window and roll the sand is what I do here.

“I seriously gotta piss.”

“I’m not pullin’ over.”

I blame them for everything, the dancers. Put on some music – that electronic shit – and they jump around and wave their arms and kick their legs and gesticulate in ways that would embarrass a fucking ostrich. I’d prefer to blame Ed Koch for everything – or even Lindsay or Beame – but it’s these fucking dancers who’ll turn the city to shit again, to the point where Tompkins Square Park is smoking tires and anarchy again. They don’t burn tires there anymore, but they did once – and they will again if these fucks have anything to say about it, which they do because they’re everywhere.

“Use a fuckin’ Gatorade bottle.”

My feet are under the seat, its curved, cushioned bottom in contour with my shins. I never know what to do with my hands, except in cars. In cars, I have places to set them. Sometimes I drive with my right hand on my hip. Nobody can see this.

Getting the Kinks Out

2009-10-28T01:36:00.002-04:00

Here's a little test. Right now, I'm sitting here in my apartment and I have to go to the supermarket. I guarantee you I'll find something there worth writing about. Here I go.

Break.

I'm back, and I have a topic: avoidance. I avoided things just now. I avoided the shithead slapdickery of this weird, foreign, out-of-state supermarket in favor of 7-11 and something to eat from a place with a drive-thru that's open late.

Why? Because I'm a guy who avoids things now. When I see a crowd, I walk the other way. If I see a line, I go home. You should see me in airports. Even if it takes me ten minutes to walk there, I'll sit at the gate that doesn't have a plane so I can avoid them. They're hell, is what they are.

So, nothing really happened because I did my best to avoid interacting with anyone who'd be irritating or stupid this late at night. I mean, I guess I could piss and moan about the jerkoff who came flying around the corner without signaling - and with his lights off - as I tried to pull out my alleyway onto a main road, but even he didn't bother me because I floored it and smoothed my way into the left lane before he affected my life or I affected his. I'm a very good driver.

Also, when you see something in a magazine or a book that doesn't look right, it's not always the writer's fault. Start doing this for pay and you'll realize how starched all this shit gets before anyone sees it.

Where

2009-10-27T02:48:00.003-04:00

So, yeah, I'm a bullshitter. I promised I'd post more, and then I turned around and didn't do shit for...I don't know how many days. You won't hear any sob story from me tonight, though. Life is good, and I'm pretty much just counting down the days until I can move back to New York. That's coming soon, within a matter of weeks, and it's something I'm really looking forward to because I think I'll be capable of viewing the city from an entirely new perspective when I get home.

I've lived away from New York for extended periods of time before, but that was when I was much, much younger and had a lot less at stake in terms of not having left any kind of life I'd built up the way I have this time around. I took a big chance moving, but it seems to have paid off. I'll explain a lot more about what I've been doing when I move back home and things get settled a little more.

Suffice it to say that I've net some very interesting people, some of them rather famous, and I've done some interesting writing - which, as you know if you've been reading this site for a while, is something I'm still surprised to be drawing a paycheck from. It's a far cry from where I was and what I was doing a few years ago.

There's definitely more to come. First, I want to show my agent what I've been doing. That should be interesting.

Enthusiasm

2009-10-01T00:10:00.000-04:00

I just checked my stats on Statcounter and I can’t believe how many people are still reading this blog. There’s been nothing new here in months, and nothing of substance for quite a bit longer than that.

So, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do to “reward” you people for sticking with me: I’m going to get this shit moving again.

Why? Because I’m kind of far from home right now, and missing New York like a motherfucker, and if there’s one thing this blog has always been about, it’s New York, all the way down the line. Writing here makes me think of New York, because this site was once pretty damned popular there as far as blogs go. I miss that, I miss home, and I miss the feedback I used to get when I’d put something halfway decent online.

I’ll be home before long, and I’m looking forward to making it a permanent stay, but for now I think I’ll document some of the shit I’m running into out here in America. The world west of Jersey is a pretty fucked up kind of place.

And, as it turns out, the Ed Hardy disease is incurable.

Ode To New York

2009-09-17T04:29:00.001-04:00

I miss it very much, although things could be much, much worse.

Can't wait to get home. HOME.

Update

2009-09-16T03:44:00.000-04:00

Here's an explanation.

I have a "real" job now. As usual, I won't get into specifics, but I'm doing something that's a direct result of having started this blog way back whenever. I don't even remember when I started this fucking thing. Half of it isn't even online anymore.

Anyway, I'm finally doing something with my life that doesn't require the use of either my back or my hands -- at least not in the angry way I've used both in years past.

I also don't live in New York anymore, at least temporarily -- which is very strange and rather uncomfortable at times. People outside of New York are just fucking strange and I don't like them.

Am I happy? Yeah, I am, most of the time. I've been very fortunate.

Am I writing? Yeah, I do it for a living now. More on this when I'm comfortable offering a more detailed explanation. I think I've gotten a lot better at it, and I think I have another book in me - a real one. For now I'm happy in my Howard Rourke role here in the quarry.

Has life changed? Yeah, in a big way.

The blog? I kind of miss the feedback. We'll take things as they come. I'm still getting used to having a job that doesn't require me to sweat or get injured. Thanks for all the emails. All is well.

The Man

2009-09-11T15:04:00.000-04:00

I think he would have been happy with what I'm doing these days.

I really think so.

Monday

2009-05-18T09:09:00.000-04:00

I'm back. Last week wasn't an "I'm done" week. It was just one of those periods where I had very little free time, and what little time I did have was not spent sitting in front of a computer.

Some very good things happened this past week. Also, some bad things happened.

I am status quo.

Quick Getaway

2009-05-08T04:00:00.000-04:00

More professional athletes are currently using illegal Performance Enhancing Drugs than you could ever imagine.

If you don't think this is the case, then you're naive.

Genetics only take you so far.

People who use steroids and growth look a certain way. People who don't use them don't look that way. Those of us who've been around it can discern this look from a mile away.

I know what I'm talking about.

Alex Rodriguez is full of shit.

This reminds me of the 70's and 80's, when people weren't sure whether professional wrestling was fake or not.

Wake up and take off the pink socks. All sports are dirty. Saying your prayers and taking your vitamins won't get you $252 million.

I still love sports.

I am no longer feeling pathetic.

Thank you.

More Running

2009-05-07T12:11:00.001-04:00

I did 45 minutes of Long Slow Distance (LSD) today. I have no idea how far I went, but it was probably somewhere in the vicinity of 4.5 miles. I took it slow, recovering from the past two training days.

Here’s what I thought about while I was running:

I thought about acceptance. I thought about accepting that something is wrong, accepting the consequences that come with something being wrong, and accepting the fact that trying to “quick fix” the various consequences won’t solve the main problem.

Think of me as a guy with the flu.

When you have the flu, you have a sore throat, a fever, a cough, the chills, a runny nose, and pains all over your body. What do most people do when this happens? Well, if you have medical insurance – and some sense – you go to a doctor, get a prescription for some antibiotics, then go home, go to bed, and sweat it out. This, however, is not what I do when I get the metaphorical “flu.”

Here’s what I’ve done for many, many years:

I caught myself a nice little flu bug a few years back, but couldn’t see the forest for the trees, if you will. I only saw a collection of symptoms (consequences), and I tried to attack them one by one instead of putting everything together and going to the source.

I said, “Man, if I could only get rid of this runny nose, I’ll be fine.” So, I went to the pharmacy, bought some nasal spray and made my nose stop running. Meanwhile, I was still coughing and feverish, and I had the chills like a motherfucker. And my throat was killing me.

So, I took some cough syrup and put a few extra blankets over me, but I forgot to keep using the nasal spray, so my nose started running again, and I still had a fever and my throat felt like it was on fire.

I gargled with some salt water and took a painkiller, but I’d kicked off the blankets, lost the nasal spray and forgotten to take another spoonful of cough syrup.

I could go on, but I think you get the point here.

When you don’t treat the flu, when you pretend you don’t have it and go about your business, out in the cold, like it’s not happening, it turns into pneumonia. Ignore the pneumonia and you’re fucked.

That’s my metaphor for stopping a backslide and protecting what you’ve got left. My flu was about to turn into pneumonia. Maybe it already did, but a conversation with a guy I’ll call The Pro made me change the way I look at things.

“Look at the people you’ve surrounded yourself with,” he said to me.

Continuing this flu charade, those people are my arms, legs, mind, heart and talent. I still have those things. The flu can’t kill them off. It tried, but it hasn’t. You treat the flu at the source, the symptoms go away. And, in time, you’re as good as new.

That’s what’s happening right now.

Saturday Final

2009-05-07T04:00:00.001-04:00

“You wanna go?”

“Yeah.” It was getting late. Half past midnight, which for me is late on a Saturday night these days. I’d had enough of the bars, enough of the beer, enough of the locals and enough trying to get around things.

“She’s coming back to the house.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“I’m just letting you know.”

“It’s your house, man. When do I ever give a shit about that?”

“Well, you know...” he started.

I held up a hand and stopped him cold. “Dude, I don’t give a fuck. All night I’m telling you I don’t give a fuck. I told you fifteen times already, I’m just happy bein’ out of the house.”

See, when you’re divorced with a couple of kids, you gravitate toward other people who are divorced with a couple of kids. And when you’re a guy and she’s a girl, you find a night when you both don’t have your kids, and, well, you take care of your needs. This was one of those nights, and our girl friend, Divorced Girl, was one of those girls.

My guy friend, Divorced Guy, has been divorced for a year and a half. This is what he does. This is what they do. It’s a repeating loop. Sometimes I’m the third wheel.

We’re older now, and we’re starting to take some hits.

We walked home. All three of us. Together. I walked in the house, poured myself a glass of wine – it was all Divorced Guy had on hand – sat on the couch and turned on the TV.

“Are you okay?” asked Divorced Girl.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m fine.”

“Really? Listen, if you want to talk or anything...”

“Look, I really appreciate it, but I’m all talked out. I’m fine. Honest. You guys do whatever you want. I’m just gonna sit here on the couch, drink wine, watch Star Trek and spin my phone around on the coffee table.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” she said. “If you need anything...”

“Stop with the ‘poor thing’ shit already,” I interrupted. “Have I been a fucking sad sack all night? Have I been a drain on anyone’s evening?”

“Of course not.”

“I was good tonight, wasn’t I?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything stupid.”

“Yeah, you were great. You’ve never not been great.”

“That was all I needed for tonight. I’m done. Go have fun. I’m fine right here.”

I poured more wine into a glass with a stem and brought it back into the TV room. I set it on the coffee table, on a coaster. I don’t know why I need to put glasses with stems on coasters, but it seems like the right thing to do, like even though the wine is at room temperature, it’s suddenly going to cool down, form condensation on the stem and leave a ring mark on the veneer. I’ve never seen a wine glass do this, but I always use a coaster.

Maybe it seems to ease the landing a bit.

I put a throw pillow on the coffee table’s glass top and set my feet on it as gently as I could. I tucked my phone under my crotch so I could feel it if it vibrated. I heard laughter coming from the basement.

Then I fell asleep. I don’t remember my dream, but I woke up knowing around wasn't good enough anymore. The only way out is through.

Why Bouncers Are Dumb And Stupid

2009-05-06T04:00:00.004-04:00

In the bouncing community in New York – at least within the one I belong to – I’m a nodal point. Malcolm Gladwell would call me a “connector.” I’m the bridge between disparate cliques, sets and solos.

In other words, I’m one of the guys you call when you need a phone number, or when you need to get in touch with a guy because you need him to work.

That’s how it works with bouncing. The head bouncer at a club usually doesn’t have a master sheet with everyone’s number on it. Head bouncers aren’t that organized. Instead, on a staff of, say, thirty guys, he’ll have five or six guys like me who know everyone. And he’ll call those five or six guys and tell them to spread whatever word he’s looking to spread.

Some guys stay with one little clique and they never move out of it. When we sit around waiting to start a shift, they're always with the same three guys, every night, and they never talk to anyone else. I've done cliques. You get sick of guys. I need variety. Other guys are lone wolves. They sit by themselves and never talk to anyone. Lone wolves don’t last long.

I talked to everyone when I worked in the city. I made friends with everyone. On a staff of thirty guys, I’d have twenty-eight phone numbers by the time I was done. I was Paul Revere. When I put the word out, the militia locked and loaded.

Even in my semi-retirement, I’m still part of the crew. Still a connector. Witness tonight’s timeline of stupidity:

8:30 AM: Head Bouncer calls Bouncer A, asking him to call Bouncer B to tell him to be at work at 7 since it was Cinco de Mayo and they were expecting a crowd.

8:35 AM: Bouncer A doesn’t have Bouncer B’s phone number, so he calls me – even though I no longer work at this club – asking me to call Bouncer B and tell him to be at work at 7.

8:40 AM: After exchanging small talk with Bouncer A, I call Bouncer B, only to find out he’s changed his number.

8:42 AM: I text Bouncer C the following: “Call Bouncer B and tell him to be at work at 7.”

8:45 AM: Bouncer C texts me back with Bouncer B’s phone number. This wasn’t what I asked for, but okay. Bouncer C is a bit of an imbecile, so I shrugged my shoulders and forged ahead with this charade.

8:46 AM: I call Bouncer B and leave him a message telling him to report to work at 7.

Now, note the time stamp here:

6:15 PM: My phone rings, and it’s Bouncer B.

“Am I working at Club Slapdick tonight?”

“Uh, yeah? Did you not get my message this morning?”

“No,” he says. “I didn’t get any message.”

“Why are you calling me, then?”

“Because Bouncer C called me and said I should ask you if I’m working tonight.”

“When was this?” I ask.

“Just a minute ago.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little odd that Bouncer C, who has your phone number and talks to you five days a week, would ask me, who hasn’t spoken to you in six months, to tell you when to go to work?”

“Yes.”

Fast forward again:

10:45 PM: My phone rings with a number I don’t recognize. I pick up, and it’s Bouncer C’s nominal girlfriend. She found my number in his phone one day, and now she calls me whenever he's engaging in shenanigans, which is often.

“Where the fuck is this motherfucker?”

“Huh?”

“This motherfucker,” she says, “told me he was working, and I called there and they said he wasn’t there.”

These scenes happen regularly, even though I haven’t worked at any of these clubs in over two years now. They still call me. They still pull me in. It’s wacky.

Running Man

2009-05-05T11:56:00.002-04:00

I did a post on running last week, but I want to go over it again because it’s something I’m starting to enjoy.

For large chunks of my life, my 5:30 AM runs were a staple. Running early was something I did like breathing throughout high school and through long periods of my adulthood. I’d wake up around 5:15, take a hot shower – my warm-up – and get on the road. I’ve never needed to stretch much or do any kind of extended warm-up as an athlete, so I’d just get going. I know this about myself because, knock wood, I’ve never once, in all my years of running, lifting and playing competitive sports, pulled a hamstring. I had one nasty adductor pull a couple of years ago that was caused by stupidity, but that’s been it.

I get outside and I go.

I started doing these AM runs again last week. Last Tuesday and Thursday, and today – my third run of the week happens on Saturday afternoon – I was up well before the sun came up, showered, and in motion.

Things work themselves out when I run. Dramas play out in my head, and they’re resolved by the time I hit certain objective points on my route. Then something else pops into my head to whirl and churn until I hit the next mile marker, where it fades into the next thought. And the next. And the next. And so on.

And then I have days like today, where I’m rested and ready after taking two days off, and I can push things a little without payback, and I roll through the finish line of my 3+ mile course two minutes faster than I did on Saturday. And when that happens, I start liking myself a little better, which is something I haven’t been able to do in quite a while.

I’m not planning on going crazy with this, because I still love lifting heavy weights in the gym, but I’m sure as hell intrigued by how it’s making me look and feel. When I run at 5:30 in the morning, I’m a 16-year-old kid again with a football season in front of me and a job to get done, and it finally feels good to be me again -- and that's been a long time in coming, believe me.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled cynicism, negativity and antagonism...

Tat

2009-05-05T04:00:00.000-04:00

“You wanna go across the street?”

I wedged the heels of my hands into my eye sockets and rubbed, hard, spreading a half dozen strains of Swine Flu across both my corneas. “Yeah,” I said. “What the hell.”

“It might be a little more crowded over there,” said my guy friend. “Do you mind?”

“I don’t give a fuck,” I replied, pulling a ten off the stack of bills I’d left on the bar. “I like going out the back over there when I need a break. It’s quieter.”

“You’ll need a break from these people.”

“Ah, whatever man. I don’t give a fuck about anything tonight. I’ll just sit and listen.”

I let him lead the way across the street. We slid between two parked cars, me following him, and stopped on the opposite sidewalk. The grocery store where I’d worked the deli counter as a kid had installed new front doors. I wondered what the fuck was wrong with the old ones. I resisted the urge to spit on the sidewalk because I wasn’t sure why I wanted to do that. I liked working the deli counter. When people fucked with me, I’d thicken up their slices. Be a rude shit to your deli guy and you’ll end up with ham steaks in wax paper, or worse. I never took the “or worse” road, but I know guys who did.

Inside, he introduced me to about a half dozen people. Three of them had cigarettes behind one ear. Two of the three shook hands and excused themselves to go out back. That left one guy with a cigarette behind his ear. I knew him once, years ago, but I’d never seen him with a cigarette behind his ear. I figured there’d been a downturn. You don’t wear a cigarette behind your ear if you’re still in the game.

“Hey Tim,” I said. “How you been?”

“Not bad,” he replied, fishing for his lighter. “How you been, man? I’m gonna go out back for a cigarette.”

“Good seein’ you.”

I turned to my guy friend and tapped him on the elbow with the back of my hand. Four times. “Get me a fuckin’ Sam Adams, man. Please.”

“Okay.”

“You need money?”

“No,” he replied. “I got it.”

I shadowed him to the bar, not wanting any engagement with the rest of the crowd he’d come there to meet. I stared at myself in the mirror behind the bar. Talk about a rotten fucking time. I took my first sip of Sam before the head went anywhere. There’s a kind of sucking action there. Then I took another. Quickly. Half the pint was gone before my guy friend pocketed his change.

“What’s this mean?” asked my guy friend, running a finger over a tattoo of Japanese characters on the arm of one of the girls who’d had a cigarette behind her ear.

“This one means beautiful,” she said, her finger on one, “and the other one means girl. Beautiful girl.”

“You sure about that?” I asked, looking at the tattoo, then looking at her. Nicotine was in the air.

“Yeah,” she replied. “I looked it up in a book and brought it in with me.”

“Oh.” I took another long sip of Sam Adams. I was down to about a quarter of a glass left. “I thought it said, ‘I like moose cock.’”

“No, my tattoo artist is a girl.”

I Humped a Pillow My First Time

2009-05-04T04:00:00.001-04:00

“You know,” said my friend, a guy, “I’ve been jerking off to your sister for twenty years now. Maybe more.”

I picked up my glass, took a sip of Yuengling, then put it back on the coaster. “What the fuck is with the Yuengling? Can’t we do a little better than this?”

“What’s wrong with Yuengling?”

“What’s wrong with it,” I replied, “is that it’s all they got on tap in this fuckin’ shithole, and I don’t wanna spend six bucks on a fuckin’ bottle.”

“Did you even hear what he said before that?” asked my other friend, a girl. “Why would you say that?”

“I’m just being honest. She’s hotter now than she was in college.”

“Are you listening to this?” asked the girl, turning to watch me take another sip of warm fucking Yuengling. I need drinks cold. Ice cold. Especially beer. I’m Irish, and I’ve spent a good bit of time getting my testicles kicked in Galway and Limerick – especially Galway for the testicle thing – but the rivers of my aversion to warm, or even slightly chilled, beer run wide and deep.

I also tend to avoid the issue of having an allegedly “hot” sister to whom my friends have pleasured themselves since puberty.

“Yeah, I heard him,” I said. “Nothing I haven’t heard before.”

“From him?”

“No, not from him, necessarily, which is why this is a little awkward and why I started bitching about the Yuengling, which is still warm and still tastes like cat piss.”

I always say drinks taste like cat piss because there was a guy at my old gym who smelled like cat piss. It bothered the members so much that management eventually sent him a letter telling him not to come in smelling like cat piss. That was the right thing to do.

He used to follow me around the gym, did Cat Piss Guy. I swear he did, even though people said I had some kind of persecution complex, or maybe paranoia. I don’t know about all that, but I always had the feeling Cat Piss Guy was some gay old chicken hawk type who followed guys around the gym, and when I was there, I was a target.

I also have a friend who used to look like Jesus. We went to The Vault in Manhattan one night because we wanted to see what the fuck it was, and when I went into the bathroom to take a leak, a guy laid down on the floor and asked me to piss on him. Cat Piss Guy reminds me of the guy on the floor at The Vault. Also, I sat next to the Jesus Looking Guy at a funeral mass once, and when the priest read the lines “now we turn to Jesus” from a passage, I turned and stared at him.

“Did you have a picture of her or something?” my girl friend asked my guy friend. “How does that work?”

“You don’t need a picture,” he replied. “It’s better without a picture, because you can close your eyes.”

“Yeah,” I added, “I was never big on getting images out of magazines and shit as a kid. When I actually figured out how to do it, I used to walk around school going up to girls and thanking them.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did. I was fucked up. I used to walk up to girls and say, ‘Listen, I just wanna thank you for being so good to me last night.’”

“You’re full of shit,” she said. “You never did that.”

I pursed my lips, sucked in the dregs from my glass, put it down on the bar and slid it forward, adding a little pull-back spin with my fingertips. You spin the glass and you play around with money, and the next thing you know, the bartender’s in front of you. Funny how that works.

Watch your bartender next time he gives you some money back. See if he puts it in a puddle. Bartenders do that for tips because they know people don’t want to put wet bills back in their pockets. Overfill the drink, put it down on the bar, wait for the mark to pick it up, then slap the bills down in the puddle. That’s how they get extra.

“He did do that,” said my guy friend. “I remember.”

“What if he walked up and said that to your sister?” asked my girl friend.

“He knows better,” I said. I was tired.

Books

2009-05-01T04:00:00.000-04:00

Let’s be perfectly frank here. I think everyone who’s been reading this blog for a few weeks is aware that I’m stuck in the middle of a situation (of my own making) that I really, really don’t want to be in, and there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about it at the moment, so I’m stuck.

So I’m pretty much just burying myself in work, training and reading. I promised you some book reviews a couple of weeks ago, so I’ll start that today because I don’t want to write another cryptic post about “making changes,” or “acceptance,” or “moving forward” or anything else like that – although I’ve pretty much already done that in these first two paragraphs.

Anyway, I’ve read three books recently. My reviews here will be very straightforward. I’m not planning on doing anything other than telling you to either read the book or not. If you see me “analyzing” anything, it probably means I didn’t like it. Here they are:

High Exposure, by David Brashears: I went through the whole Into Thin Air inspired Everest books phase back in the late 90’s, but the Divorced Guy’s father gave me this one so I read it. It’s definitely more technical, from a climbing standpoint, than any of the others, but it fits into the typical Everest book theme of “I’m right and everyone else is wrong,” and that grated on me a bit – although, yes, I’m aware that when a guy writes a book, it’s necessarily going to be his opinion. It’s just that in all the accounts I’ve read of the Everest disaster, everyone has a different version, and everyone else was at fault.

So, I don’t really know what to make of this one. If you’re into rock or mountain climbing, you’ll like it. It’s not exactly a narrative geared for the general public the way Into Thin Air was, which I think was the problem for me, since I don’t know enough about climbing, or about who David Brashears is, to have enjoyed this book the way I should have.

Ask The Dust, by John Fante: This is one of the better books I’ve read in my lifetime. I don’t know if it’s considered a classic, since I’d never heard of John Fante until a few months ago, but it definitely should be. As the person who recommended this to me said, John Fante writes like Charles Bukowski wishes he could have.

Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem: This is another good choice. Read this, especially if you grew up anywhere within the five boroughs of New York City. Absolutely fucking outstanding. This is going to sound cheesy, hackneyed, clichéd and entirely “unprofessional,” but I couldn’t put this book down.

Ironic how I dedicated 176 words to the book I had to force myself to finish, and a paragraph each to what are probably the two best books I’ve read this year. I suppose that’s just the kind of week I’m having – opposite, backward, and spitting in the face of logic.

As for how I feel about this, I refer you to “Danphe and the Brain,” from Mogwai’s The Hawk is Howling album. That about sums it up.

Cardio

2009-04-30T15:28:00.001-04:00

One thing I’ve been doing for a while now is steady-state cardiovascular exercise, or “cardiac work.” I started really hitting this hard last fall, when I realized that although I’d lost a lot of weight – and a lot of body fat – the changes I was trying to make pertained, almost exclusively, to my strength levels and how I looked. I was doing next to nothing to improve my biological power.

So, on the advice of some world class people, I started really blasting away on cardio in the gym. I’ve always been a strong runner, relatively speaking – at least for a guy my size with a background in interval-based sports – but I didn’t want to go out and start running right away with all the excess weight I was carrying.

I started out with this formula:

220 – age = max heart rate

This is very simple, doesn’t require you to go to an exercise lab to find your anaerobic threshold, and is easily applicable to any piece of cardio equipment in the gym. Once I had this number, I used a variety of cardio machines to keep my heart rate within 60-70% of this number. For most of these workouts, I was simply walking uphill on a treadmill and grabbing the electrodes with my hands every few minutes or so to test my heart rate.

I would do this 4-5 times a week, and I eventually threw in some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) sessions to compliment this work. These HIIT workouts consist of 10-15 minutes of all-out sprint intervals, either on a machine, or running (sprints), or through the use of barbell circuits.

I was still eating like shit and lifting heavy, so these workouts didn’t start manifesting themselves in aesthetic results right away. What they did do, however, was make me feel a hell of a lot better. After a few weeks, I was sprinting up sets of subway steps – and doing other things of this nature that used to make me breathe a little heavy at the top – and not feeling a thing.

Two months ago, a guy I train – I have a handful of clients I train on the side – gave me a $300 Polar heart rate monitor. You strap an electrode around your chest and wear a watch on your wrist, and it tells you your heart rate at any given moment. This was great, because it enabled me to both take my resting heart rate in the morning and know what my heart rate was when doing something other than tediously walking on a treadmill for 45 minutes in an irritating gym.

Long story short, I’ve started running. “Distance” running. I strapped on my heart rate monitor last week, determined to keep the number at a certain range, and ready to simply start walking if it exceeded that range. The idea was to just go for a set period of time, then stop, then see how far I went.

This morning I ran 3.5 miles at about an eight minute per mile pace. My heart rate never exceeded 155. I weigh 240 pounds right now.

Now, I know these numbers aren’t exactly Olympian, but for a guy who’s been doing nothing but lifting and sprinting for several years – I can still bench press over 400 pounds, etc, etc – I don’t think this is too fucking shabby, especially when you consider the fact that I haven’t been killing myself, effort-wise, in any way, shape or form. I’ve just been monitoring my heart rate religiously and keeping a steady pace with whatever I’ve been doing. I wasn’t breathing heavily at all when I crossed the line this morning, and I probably could have done another couple of miles with ease.

The entire goal of the operation here is to cut down to about 215 by the middle or end of summer, with around 8% body fat.

The windup here? If you’re looking to do something like this, get yourself a heart rate monitor and use it. It’ll cut your get-in-shape time in half, if not by more.

Thurs

2009-04-30T04:00:00.000-04:00

I have nothing I need to say at the moment, but I wanted to keep my streak alive and post something. Yesterday was a very transitional day for me -- a Tony Robbins-esque passing from one state to another -- and I'm still trying to process a lot of the information I've been given.

Don't worry, though. It's all good shit. Captain Morbidity has fled the scene. Now it's time to get to work and build this shit back up again.

Summary

2009-04-29T04:00:00.000-04:00

I’ve been making lots of proclamations lately. For the past three weeks, virtually every sentence I’ve said, written or thought has begun with the words, “From now on...”

“From now on,” I’ll say, “I’m going to do this, this and this, and that’s how it’s going to be.” Then, two days later, I’m doing the exact opposite.

I’ve also prematurely declared my head to have been extracted from my ass on several occasions now. For me to have thought my head was out of my ass at the time – and even now – proves how far it really was jammed up my rectal cavity. This is what’s known as being delusional.

Not every story has a happy ending. Now it’s time to sort some things out and fix them and shut the fuck up about it.

So, in a last, sweeping proclamation, I declare that there will be no more proclamations coming from me, no more bemoaning of my head’s anal-bound state, and no more “whining like a bitch.” If you want to know how I feel, I’m referring you to music. Listen to Mogwai’s Mr. Beast album, especially the song “Emergency Trap,” and that’ll about sum it up.

I’ll leave this chapter of shitty blogging with something a friend of mine sent in an email today:

Keep your chin up.

Actually, don't. I don't know why people fucking say that. Keeping your chin up is a fucking great way to get knocked the fuck out. Keep your chin down and your fucking hands up.

Tuesday

2009-04-28T04:00:00.001-04:00

Initial Disclaimer: I made a decision about something today that could potentially make me look and feel really, really stupid for a variety of reasons. Given my current situation, this is also probably a very stereotypical and predictable decision – a fact of which I’m well aware. In the interest of doing something, however, I’m doing something.

So, yeah. There’s that. I’m nervous but hopeful, but I’m also cognizant of the risks involved and the volume of work I need to do to extract myself from this mess I’ve created. I don’t like looking and feeling like an asshole, but I probably should have thought about that before I adopted it as my permanent persona. That’s all I have to say about that.

I did some bouncing this past weekend, as you can see from yesterday’s post, but I haven’t really been able to conjure up anything good out of it because my sense of humor switch has been duct taped in the off position for a few weeks now. Ordinarily, I could probably come up with something pretty good about a skinny fat guy screaming in the middle of a bar, but...well...you know how it is.

What’s good and bad about this is that I wasn’t paying attention to a lot of the stupid shit that went on. The habit’s become so ingrained that I always stand around looking for – and mentally filing away – material when I bounce. This weekend? Didn’t happen. I just bounced, without giving a flying fuck what I was looking at.

When I was involved in a fight, I didn’t give a shit about the guy’s clothes, or about what he was saying, or about what he’d done to the other guy. He was leaving, I was ready, and my mind was just blank. I suppose that’s how it feels to do this job without having a blog in mind every time something happens. It actually felt pretty good.

This isn’t some kind of cockeyed goodbye to job-blogging, mind you. I’ll probably always do that in some way, shape or form. Things happened the way they did this weekend because I was in a bad mood, preoccupied with something, and wanted to “lose myself” in my job for a few hours. That’s all it was. I paid attention to what I was doing, did a good job, got paid and went home.

Of course, that didn’t bode well for Sunday, when I went back to being preoccupied, but at least I know why I’m having a hard time writing about bouncing in any way other than matter-of-factly.

Two guys squared off. I ran over, yoked one up, dragged him out the back door, yelled at him a little, didn’t listen to a word he said, then stood there until he walked off. The end.

That’s some exciting shit, right? You see how I can make a narrative sing when I’m in the mood? I did tell another bouncer who was bemoaning the fact that he was turning 28 to “Fuck off,” which elicited laughs from the other guys, but there weren’t many highlights this weekend. Just a lot of dead space, dead air, and a great big dead zone that I created with my own shit shovel.

Loud

2009-04-27T04:00:00.006-04:00

Saturday night was a long one. Bouncing again. I need the money. Sue me.

I’m standing in a spot just inside the front door, being what you might call the secondary ID guy. I’m there because they like having me inside to keep an eye on things and direct the guys in my section during situations – as opposed to standing outside and spending all my time checking licenses. That’s what you get when you’re “senior man.” You take the lead. I hate that shit.

So I’m there, and a guy about five feet from me keeps screaming. He’s screaming all kind of shit.

“DID YOU GRAB MY ASS?”

He would scream this every time a group of girls walked past.

“FUCKIN’ YANKEES!!! FUCK BOSTON, MAN!!! FUCKIN’ YANKEES!!!”

He kept yelling this at a TV for no apparent reason. There was no game playing.

This went on for at least fifteen minutes before I finally told him to shut the fuck up. I didn’t ask him to move, and I didn’t ask him to tone it down. I told him, in no uncertain terms, to “shut the fuck up.”

He was a skinny fat guy with thin forearms who smoked a cigarette every ten minutes. He was wearing an Affliction shirt. When people like this irritate me at work, it’s easy to tell them to “shut the fuck up” because they’re not doing anything back to me unless they have a gun, which they don’t because we check.

What I need to know, though, is why. Why do they do this? Why do people insist upon screaming like that? Why are there loud-laughers in the world? Why does everything even remotely funny in a bar, lounge or club require some guy who’s borderline emphysemic to guffaw at just the right pitch to elicit a palpable aura of irritation from everyone within a twenty foot radius?

This is what I have for you today. I have this because I thought about it for a while at work. That wasn’t the only time I said “fuck” to someone, either.

A fat guy in a black polo shirt two sizes too small came to the door with four other people. When I asked them for ID, he said, “Oh, dere wit’ me.”

I said, “I need their ID.”

He said, “I said dere wit’ me.”

I said, “And who the fuck are you?”

Then Ray – yes, Ray from the book – told the guy to “get the fuck outta here.”

Since I only just started paying attention to this shit again this weekend – and by “this shit,” I’m referring to bouncing – I’ll tell you this much: patience and tolerance levels are at an all-time low. I could see it up front – you had one chance to be nice to the door guys, otherwise they (we) treated you the way Ray treated the fat guy in the shirt that made him look like a sausage. It happened all night, and I don’t blame the guys for losing it on some people.

Everyone I know has shit going on. Serious shit. So, bar/club problems? No fucking way. Not about to put up with it.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the fight, and the debate over whether Affliction and Ed Hardy shirts are a "weakness" or a "sickness."

Shining the Flashlight of Hypocrisy

2009-04-24T14:29:00.001-04:00

So I’m driving about two hours ago, and I get a call from a number I don’t recognize. It’s a local one, though, so I pick up.

“Hello?”

“Hi Rob, it’s (Mutant’s Girlfriend). The Mutant’s girlfriend?”

“Oh, hey. How are you?”

“I’m good,” she says. “Listen, are you gonna be in (town in Suffolk County) today?”

“Actually, yeah. I’m on my way there right now.”

“Do you mind helping me pick up a piece of furniture today? The Mutant is a lazy piece of shit, and I need to get this for my mother today, otherwise we’ll lose it.”

“Yeah, sure.”

She gave me directions to the place, I loaded the piece into her SUV, and that was the end of it. I didn’t want to feel like a hypocrite (inside joke/reference), so we agreed to tell him she found someone across the street who came over and helped.

Now, ordinarily, I’d be, like, “Fuck, man. Are you serious right now?” But today? No dice on the laziness today. I’m just thankful for human contact. You need your fucking oil changed today, just give me a call and I’ll be right over.

Beats sitting here, that’s for damned sure.

Anyway, I’m on my way home and my phone rings again. It’s The Mutant:

“Hey, did my girlfriend ask you to move a piece of furniture for her?

“Yeah,” I replied. “We just got done.” I couldn’t bring myself to lie to the guy.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Dude, don’t blame her. Seriously. Ordinarily, I’d have given her a hard time about this, and I’d have given you a hard time about it, but you know my situation right now. She did me a favor getting me out of the fucking house.”

“It’s cool,” he said. “I just didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable saying no.”

“Listen, I don’t give a fuck right now. I don’t want to get in the middle of a fight with you guys, and I don’t care. I really don’t.”

“Okay.”

“To be honest with you right now? If she called and told me you were hanging off a cliff by one finger, and I was the only one who could save you, I’d say, ‘That’s great, but gimme a second while I tell you about my problem.’”

So, yeah. Pretty fucking ironic. Not too sure about my relationship with God right now, but he’s got some sense of humor.

Mail

2009-04-24T10:20:00.001-04:00

I received this email this morning from a guy I’ve been corresponding with regularly for a few years now:

“You are being unnecessarily rough on yourself. I suggest that people read blogs BECAUSE the blogs offer an individual viewpoint. No one person can ever have an omniscient completely neutral overview of anything. Any human observation is by necessity one-sided. Blogs share sides other than our own.

Some observations may have a higher bullshit factors than others if they come from individuals who choose to limit how well they function as a thinking being. Others, including yours even at your most cranky, can offer an interesting alternative world view. Your attitude may not be mine. I may or may not agree with your opinions about what you observe. But the one-sided view through your windows is certainly different from what I see out of mine, and might be just as rich in detail.”

I agree with much of this, but it really doesn’t apply here. The point I was trying to make is that I don’t want to be the one who’s trying to make the world see through the lens of a bullshitter. I’m not just talking about the written word here, either. What I’m saying is that even though there are aspects of my current situation with which I disagree in principle, the big picture puts the blame squarely on me.

As for the aspects “with which I disagree,” even these are kind of my doing because I’m the one who brought things to a point where anything turned into an actual “issue.” If I had behaved differently under the same circumstances, said aspects wouldn’t be issues at all. Trouble is, I differ with people in my life with regard to why this (the whole situation, from start to finish) has happened the way it has, and that’s what frustrates me.

The result, however, remains the same. Whether you got to Point Z by plane, train or automobile, you’re still at Point Z and your ride back just left town.

What I was getting at with that post was that it’s entirely self-serving – gratuitous, even – for someone to come out, after the fact, and offer some wacked-out version of events in order to either elicit sympathy or make themselves look better. I was going down that road in order to make myself feel better, was called on it – in the “real world” – and now it’s time to just back off and live my life.

Honestly? I wish somebody had wronged me, because then I’d have someone other than myself to focus this shit on.

I’ll be fine.

Friday

2009-04-24T04:00:00.001-04:00

Had a bit of a rough night, to say the least. I’ll post that book review – or something, at least – later on today.

I’ve been writing a blog for a long time, and I’ve read lots of blogs for a long time, and if there’s one thing I hate about them, it’s that they offer a completely one-sided version of whatever events are being described.

In fact, when I became “famous,” or at least blog-famous, a few years back, I can rattle off a few incidents where I had adverse dealings with some of the other flaming blogger-nutbags who’d become “famous” around the same time. If you’ve been reading this site long enough, you’ll know what I’m referring to.

And when you have a blog like this one, that (still) has a fairly sizable audience, you have a platform. And when people have platforms, they do something I can’t stand: they pontificate from the depths of their ignorance.

In other words, they give you one version of the story. Theirs. And if they have a bone to pick – or, as in most cases, they’re mentally unstable – that version is going to be a crock of shit and massively unfair to the person being skewered.

I’m not going to do that. I turned on some loud-ass music and wrote a little “grandstand” post yesterday about how great I was doing and how I was progressing from one step to another, and although that part’s sort of true, I want to make sure I point out that there are two sides to this story – as I was painfully reminded last night.

Don’t send me sympathetic emails. I don’t deserve them. I’m in a shit situation of my own making – a situation that never had to happen, and a situation out of which I’m honestly seeing no way out right now.

Things have changed for me. What effect this will have in the long run, I have no idea. But I surely don’t deserve for anyone to take my side, because I don’t have one.

I can slather catsup and mustard all over it, but it’s still a shit sandwich, it’s the only thing I have to eat, and I’m the one who made it.

Oh yeah...today's Day One again.

Youse

2009-04-23T12:02:00.001-04:00

I don’t like people with thick New York accents anymore. My aversion to this is the definition of irony, since I have one myself. I’m self-loathing.

It makes me uncomfortable to hear it. I’m embarrassed for the person. When I hear my own voice on tape, I cringe, because I’ve actually done some work to get rid of the damned thing. It’s not nearly as bad as it once was, but it’s a hell of a lot more noticeable than I think it is while I’m speaking. I’ve learned it’s one of those things you have to exaggerate. If I want my speech to be Queens-free, I essentially have to fake a British accent. It’s that ingrained.

I’m not ashamed, mind you. It’s a matter of personal preference. I’d just rather not sound like I sound. I’d rather not have “youse” and “alls” and “he ain’t doin’ nothin’” sneak into my everyday speech. Get me a little excited, however – or pissed off – and you’ll get shit straight out of Goodfellas. It’s fucking painful sometimes.

I was in the gym last night walking on the treadmill. I always walk on the treadmill for a while after I lift, because my heart rate is already elevated and because it’s good for recovery. I set the speed and the incline so my heart rate stays between 130 and 140 beats per minute (220 – age x 60-70% is the theoretical “fat burning zone,” and I’ve found this works for me). By the time I’ve lifted heavy weights for 45 minutes or so, it doesn’t take much to maintain this, and my joints feel a hell of a lot better afterward. I’m also burning fat like crazy.

Anyway, I was on the treadmill last night watching a tool with an accent hit on a girl. He wasn’t a club Guido type, per se, but this was still uncomfortable to watch. He was wearing jeans and work boots, and he had bolts tattooed on his neck. Typical New York 10 PM gym look.

“Hey, uh...howsabout you gimme yuh numbuh...and...uh...mebbe me an’ you could, ya know, go out or somethin’.”

This isn’t too bad, and I give the guy credit for trying, but then he ruined it:

“Uh...you got a boyfriend? You seein’ somebody?”

Now, I know this girl. She’s cute, and since I’ve been going to the same gym for a while now, we always say hello. I think you get to that point with pretty girls in gyms when they realize you’re not one of the pricks who’ll be in there hitting on them every five minutes. It’s safe to say hello.

The guy had his back to me, and the girl was sitting on a machine, facing me. I could hear everything they were saying. Every time she looked over, I gave her the thumbs-up and mouthed, “Awesome” at her.

Eventually, she lost it and started cracking up, right in the guy’s face. He wheeled around and looked at me, and he knew. “Okay, well,” he said to her. “You lemme know.” And then he walked away.

I feel like I violated the code. This really bothers me.