Fuck you, Larry Merchant

As has become the norm while I type this self indulgent nonsense, I'm spending another Saturday night watching men beat the everloving crap out of one another while I have a beer.

Pictured:  My typical Saturday night

Tonight we're running a double feature, HBO's Boxing After Dark and Bellator 46.  By the way, as I'm watching BAD first, the intro to this show is now some ridiculous short form movie that's somewhat reminiscent of Rocky III only without the pathos.

What the BAD intro is missing, apparently.  What the fuck, Google?

Anyway, did you know that walking corpse Larry Merchant is not only still alive, but is still providing rambling incoherent commentary and poorly thought out post fight interviews?  This, in my humble opinion, is the greatest crime against humanity since the Rape of Nanking.

Notice the lack of soul in his eyes.  He's smiling because he just drowned a kitten.

  Wikipedia tells us that this incompetent old douche was born in 1931, meaning that at present, the human stain is 80 FUCKING YEARS OLD!  No wonder he doesn't make sense half the time and the other half he's busy shitting himself.  He literally just called the state of Missouri fat.  His conception of race relations is as stunted as Peter Dinklage.

Get it!  Seriously though, watch Game of Thrones, he's awesome.

Oscar de la Hoya asked for this old bastard to be fired for talking shit about mariachi music.  Considering the fact that about 90% of the global boxing audience is Hispanic, this might have been a bad move.  The Grand Wizard must have invoked his dark master, because not only did he save his job, but he got a contract extension in 2005 to go through 2007.  On top of that, HBO picked up his contract option for multiple years after that.  He's so bad at commentating that he forgets that he's talking halfway through the statement.  The only thing he slanders worse than minorities is the english language.  If Jim Lampley has to carry his corpse any further, he's going to qualify for workman's comp.  He literally tried to just use the weather to draw an analogy that was so bad that I think Roy Jones Jr. just caught cancer from it.  He's bad, is what I'm trying to say.

The only explanation I have for this atrocity is that HBO is operating under the "there's no such thing as bad press" philosophy, because there's no goddamn way I'm the only person who thinks Larry Merchant is about 35 years past his prime.

I've gotta tell you, it feels like I've vented about all this shit before, but you know the motto by now:

Safety Dance!

I don't read my own work, so if this is a rerun, my bad.  Although it could just be that I've bitched about this to anyone who I watch boxing with to the point that this feels familiar to me.  Astonishingly, Merchant sounds a little more lucid than normal tonight.  Remember, lucid doesn't mean sane, I still think he's in his own reality.  You know what's awesome about how far television technology has come?  watching fight highlights in slow motion.  They just slowed a combo in slow motion that made a dude's face look like a shar pei shaking.

Yep, just like that but with more sweat and less cuteness.

Digital video has made it so you can capture those incredibly small moments in time in incredible detail.  Everything from a batter hitting a ball, to a knock out punch can now be analyzed by the millisecond without any loss in fidelity because you're not constrained by framerate.  What a fantastic and frivolous use of technology.  God bless America.

I think I just figured it out.  Larry Merchant is the Larry King of boxing.  Neither knew when to hang it up, and they waited until they were so out of touch that someone else had to say "I think you should spend more time with your family".

Hey, here's some cool shit I think people should check out.  First up is something AVClub linked on their page:

shortly after learning about that, a friend directed me to this:

Also, as part of my ongoing effort to expand the mindshare of AVClub's Undercover project, here are 3 of the best, that also happen to be 3 of the most recent.  Surfer Blood's cover of the Pixies is particularly good.


Parts & Labor covers Kanye West


Surfer Blood covers The Pixies


...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead covers Indigo Girls

If the video isn't above, click the link and give those struggling bastards some love.  Indie rock still is alive and well and it needs your support!

Who wants some of this?

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to another night spent with 2 of my friends.  Beer and physical violence.  That's right, it's time for another Strikeforce-based, self indulgent ramblefest wherein I bore the bejesus out of anyone that bothered to read this that doesn't follow MMA.  Tonight, your main event will be this guy:

Alistair Overeem, AKA the Demolition Man

Versus this guy:

Fabricio "Excuse my Junk" Werdum

This is a rematch from 2006 where Werdum surprisingly submitted Overeem with a Kimura and it is also part of the Strikeforce world heavyweight grand prix, which means nothing.  Lots of good fights on this card, so let's get the ball rolling with a battle between this guy:

Pictured: professional fighter, amateur douche Chad Griggs

And this guy:

Valentijn "the second most famous" Overeem

That's right, there are brothers on this card.  I don't think that matters at all, it's not like they're fighting each other.  Now that would be cool.  Talk about a blood feud!

Now if there's one thing I learned from the last time I did this, it's to not bother to write all the action.  It's not like you're reading this to get a play by play.  If you wanted that you'd go to Bloodyelbow.com or Sherdog.com or buy a Showtime subscription.  Hey, while I was typing that, Griggs mobbed on Overeem and got a stoppage by the ref, even though it was a pretty lame stoppage.  Overeem pretended he was a turtle, got hit in the face and decided to tap out.  The announcers are questioning his heart for tapping out from strikes, but I gotta tell you, I'd probably tap out as soon as I got punched.  Although to be fair, I'm a pussy and that's why I don't fight MMA for a living.

Moving along to our next fight, we are now pending a match up between this guy:

2 time olympian Daniel Cormier

versus this guy:

Jeff "the Snowman" Monson.  Seriously, that's his nickname.  Like he's fucking Frosty or something.

So, Daniel Cormier is an Olympic caliber wrestler, but he's fighting probably 20 pounds heavier than he should.  He's undefeated in MMA and that's pretty much just because he can throw dudes around like they're nothing.  Monson has like 60 fights, so this should be interesting.  One thing I've been noticing in the last few MMA events I've watched is that people are simultaneously forgetting all about leg kicks and using them a lot.  It's pretty fantastic, because when they are employed, they are now devastating instead of just annoying.  So as I watch the best televised sport, I can't help but remember that this weekend they are also showing the worst televised sport.  Golf.  Seriously, what the fuck?  Who watches that?  The only good thing about televised golf is if you have insomnia, at least you can save some money on Ambien.  How the shit is that televised on a regular basis?  I mean, for the love of God, it has it's own channel!  There are some great human stories in the golf world, especially how Lefty has battled back from crippling arthritis to be relevant again, not to mention his wife's breast cancer, and his mom's.  Also I think his kid is autistic.  How much shit can one man deal with?  Apparently it's a lot.  Anyway, yes he's a great story, but I still think he's getting paid way to much to chase a ball.  I'd rather watch college baseball than golf (and I have this weekend, much to my chagrin).  If they could hit each other with their clubs, then you might have a sport.  I mean shit, you can't even cough in a guy's backswing without it being a controversy.  Let's make it more like an NBA freethrow, where everyone is allowed to try to distract you, at least then you'd be separating the men from the boys.  Hey, I almost forgot there's a fight on and Cormier has Monson in trouble.  It's not enough trouble to finish the fight but it's been better than nothing.  All in all, this has been a pretty good performance for Cormier.  He's a wrestler by trade, but he dominated the fight with his control standing and striking.  To Monson's credit, he almost never looked like he was in danger of getting knocked out, but he was also never in danger of winning.

Wow, run on paragraph much?  Whatever, it's not like you came here for grammar.  I've got Cormier winning that fight 30-27 by the way.  Judges agreed with me, so there.

Up next, fight number 3 of 5.  This guy:

KJ Noons.  No jokes, there's nothing funny about him. 

Versus this guy:

Jorge "Gamebred" Masvidal.  He makes all us hispanics look bad in that picture.

This should be a good fight from a standup perspective.  KJ Noons has a lot of pro boxing experience and Masvidal straight up doesn't give a fuck.  I recently read a great theory on rooting for teams that I'm going to apply to this fight.  The basis is that if you don't have a preference in the fight/game, you root for the underdog.  If you're there in person, you root for the home team.  The only exception is the Doug Williams exception: if your team isn't playing, you root for the black quarterback.  I'm extending that a little further since I'm a minority and I'm rooting for the beaner.  You know what I just learned that's kind of fucked up?  Blogger doesn't recognize racial slurs as something that should be flagged by the spell checker.  On the plus side, apparently I spelled Beaner right.

The good news is that my default pony in this race just kicked the shit out of KJ Noons.  Noons is bleeding like he got stabbed in the head, and also he almost had the fight stopped after a head kick and some brutal ground and pound.  The bad news is that Noons survived and we are now in round 2.  Looks like Noons has a hematoma growing on his face, and he can't stop a takedown to save his life.  I've met hookers who spend less time on their backs (ZING!).

Noon's hematoma is making him look like Hellboy.  Red with a budding forehead.  Seriously, that thing is nasty.  It's kinda like another head is trying to grow out of his forehead.  You know that dude in Total Recall with the little guy growing out of his side?

Yeah, that one. 

Like that, only on his head.  Somehow he made it all 3 rounds.  Masvidal still kicked his ass 30-27.  Once again, the judges and I agree.

We move on to our co-main event of the evening!  This is also part of the Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix!  This guy:

Josh "the Babyfaced Assassin" Barnett.  Tested positive for steroids twice.

Versus this guy:

Brett "the Grimm" Rogers.  I'm not sure if he thinks he's gonna tell fucked up fairy tales to his opponents or what, but that's his nickname.

Just a fun fact, Barnett takes professional wrestling matches in Japan a lot of the time.  As in the Japanese equivalent of WWE professional wrestling.  I'm not judging, I just find that funny.  On the complete opposite side of the coin, Brett Rogers used to work at a Sam's Club tire center.  Go blue collar guy!

Never mind.  He lost in the second round by arm triangle choke.  OH WELL!  On to the main event.  I already told you who was going to be in the main event, so here's some background:

Alistair Overeem is HIGHLY suspected of using 'roids since he's moved up from light heavyweight (205lb limit) to heavyweight (265lb limit) but he's never tested positive, and he's still winning everything.  He's won kickboxing tournaments, he's won MMA tournaments and belts and he's pretty much a badass, giant, scary Dutchman.

Fabricio Werdum is the first man to legitimately defeat Fedor Emilianenko, and he did it with a slick ass triangle choke.  He's won most of the highest level submission wrestling competitions available, and he's already beaten Overeem once.

Using the above defined decision tree about who to root for, I'm for Werdum.  That being said, I clearly think that Overeem is going to win but I'm pulling for the underdog.

Wow, that fight was pretty boring.  Overeem was pretty clearly with winner, but it wasn't what I've come to expect from Overeem.  Werdum kept pulling guard and not doing anywhere near enough to win the fight.  Oh well, it was still a fun night of fights.  Thanks for reading this nonsense and all the Dads out there have a Happy Father's Day!!!!!

Existential Crisis No.1: Staring down a .30 Caliber Barrel

So, I know it's been a while since I've posted anything.  Did anything interesting happen in between blogs?

Oh.  I see.

Good thing you don't read this for the news, otherwise you'd be the least informed people ever.  Spring is in the air, as are tornadoes, playoff basketball, playoff hockey, NFL lockout negotiations, Mississippi river floods, excess pollen...what was I talking about again?  Oh yeah, Manny Pacquiao re-established himself as the cream of the crop and possibly the best boxer ever by holding titles in 8 different weight classes at once.

The greatest living fighter, the Philippines  probable next president and people still do this.

Possibly the most impressive thing about Manny is that he's done all of this by the age of 34.  The most impressive thing about this isn't the 8 titles he holds, or his position in the Philippine's Parliament, it's the fact that for his fight this past weekend against "Sugar" Shane Moseley, he had a guaranteed $20 million purse.

Pictured: not a $20 million purse.

I think this struck me because first of all, $20 million is a metric shit ton of money.  Second of all, he's only about 5 years older than me, and I barely cleared $35k last year.  I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, I'm just wondering how come I don't get punched in the head on a daily basis, but somehow my financial planning is worse than a Filipino who was essentially orphaned at the age of 12.  Manny is my favorite boxer, and I think his story is an inspiration and should be used when people try to make excuses as to why they can't do something, but dammit, I want a taste of that sweet filthy lucre.

Mmm, filthy.

This insane rambling brings me to the thesis statement of my...uh...self indulgent diatribe I guess.  I have noticed that my entire generation is all facing a 1/3 life crisis at the same time.  This notion is inherently ridiculous in that it assumes that everyone in my generation expects to live into their 90's.  Yes life spans are getting longer all the time, but even so the average current expectancy is in the 70's.  But I digress.

My favorite authors of my generation are all showing the symptoms.  Be they pointless nostalgia for things that just happened, or letters written to their younger selves to warn them.  I feel confident saying that most of the people who know me know that I love to reminisce about pointless bullshit, but I don't get all maudlin and depressed when I do it.

I just found out "maudlin" is named for a dude, Bill Maudlin.  Thanks Google!

Is it facing our own mortality that makes us want to relive our pasts differently, or even just relive them at all?  I personally wouldn't go back at all, even if I could.  All the shitty times and bad shit that happened that I persevered through made me who I am.  If I didn't experience that, I might not kick quite so much ass.  And the good times are never as good as you remember them.  The funniest shit is alway funniest when it's viewed through the sepia filter of time.  Do you not see your memories in sepia tone?  I pity you.  My memories come to me like a Charlie Chaplin movie, a brief amount of action, then a card with the dialog.

That tomato had gams that went from here to Timbuktu!  I tell ya she was the bee's knees!

This isn't to say that I think getting older is the cat's meow, not at all.  I literally just realized that I turn 30 next year.  When the hell did that happen?  I have gray hair...IN MY BEARD!  What the fuck is that all about?  Oh yeah.  That's right.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it.  Look, we all have anxiety about things.  I still live in an apartment instead of a house, I spend way more on cable and internet every month than I do to heat or cool my apartment.  Basically, I'm still living my life like a just graduated college student.  It's terrifying.  Nothing specifically, I like my job, my wife is cool, the city we live in is great, we have good friends, we can pay the bills with no issues, and we keep ourselves fed and comfortable.

The problem is that it always seemed like I'd have something figured out by this point in my life, and I think all of us children of the Reagan era felt that way.  We were sold a bill of materials from our sitcoms like "Growing Pains" and "Family Ties" and the entire TGIF line up that by this point in our lives our direction would be clear and all we'd be doing is handling wacky adventures week to week to keep ourselves entertained and learn life lessons.  In reality, more of us are like "Perfect Strangers".  We feel like fish out of water, trying to find someone to love us for who we are while working shitty jobs in broken down retail stores.

Oh, Balky and Larry.  What can't we learn from you?

Also, you have to watch this.  It's my life, it's my dream.  Nothing's gonna stop me now.  

While I was searching for that clip and picture, I totally lost my train of thought.  But as always, I don't go backwards.  Remember?

Sharks have no necks.

So, plowing ahead in this blog is just like how I plow ahead in my life.  I put my head down, try to do some cool shit, and live my life happy just taking every day as it comes.  I don't really start freaking out unless I try looking at the big picture.  I was an economics minor, which means I just took the econ classes that sounded fun, but an important concept I took away from...something was that in the long run we're all dead, so look at the immediate future and try to make the most out of the short run.  You know what, you don't really care.  The people who read this already know me or stumble upon it completely by happenstance.  Either way all I'm doing here is mental masturbation.  These are all platitudes that I'm expounding to convince myself that I'm somehow more sure of what I'm doing because I can see the whole game and what everyone else is up to.  It's all bullshit, but at least I realize it.  I'm comfortable in my emotional bubble.  I have no idea where I'm going, but I know where I am and I like it.  I honestly have no idea if that makes any sense.  Truth be told, it's Friday night, I've had a couple beers and I'm distracted by boxing.  I'm gonna leave you with some Music.

Both of these are from AV Club (http://www.avclub.com) and are from their outstanding Undercover series.  First up is Low covering the craptacular "Africa" by Toto.  If you like shitty lyrics done amazingly well, you'll like this:



Low covers Toto


I'll leave you with possibly my favorite Undercover ever, Wye Oak covering "Mother" by Mr. Misfit himself, Glen Danzig.  If you don't like Danzig, I don't like you:


Wye Oak covers Danzig


GOOD NIGHT EVERYBODY!

Momma didn't raise no April Fool.

So, can anyone else believe it's already fucking April?  What happened to the first quarter of the year?  It seems like it was just New Years.  In spite of the fact that I can't figure out for the life of me where the last 3 months went, April is off to a damn fun start.  Last night Showtime had a really fun Strikeforce Challengers series fight card, and tonight Bellator is is airing fights featuring some of my favorite fighters all on one card.

Ben Saunders is fighting on Bellator, here he shows his opponent what fallen arches look like.

In case you haven't heard (or more likely since no one reads this, you don't care/exist) the parent company of UFC recently purchased Strikeforce.  This has created quite a buzz in the MMA community.  For me, this basically means many, many more fights to watch in the short term.  I honestly don't remember the last weekend that didn't have a fight card occurring to occupy at least 2 hours of my weekend.  It's an embarrassment of riches, and it's fantastic.  I know I write about it too damn much, but it never ceases to amaze me just how far this sport has come.  It's made it from a sport that was relegated to states with no athletic commission like Alabama, to a sport that is regulated in 48 states.  By the way, one of the 2 states that doesn't regulate MMA is New York.  How stupid is that?  It just goes to prove my point, politics are retarded.  Anyway, I'm going to completely change gears and talk about something all of us should care about.

What the...I don't know what that has to do with anything.  I'm going to go with, um, Libya?  Maybe?  I don't know.  Hey here's something fun:


Iron And Wine covers George Michael

That's right, dear reader, AV Club undercover is back.  I'm actually almost a month late with this as my favorite so far was the first of the new series.  If you haven't been paying attention, Undercover is a fun feature where AV Club gets some of their favorite indie artists to perform songs that aren't theirs.  It's cool for a bunch of reasons, but my biggest reasons are that it can introduce you to new artists you've never bothered to listen to (like Iron and Wine) and also, it puts some of your favorite/least favorite songs into new hands to provide you with a new take on some old garbage.  It's like if you take leftovers from last weeks dinners and turn them into some wonderful casserole.  Or in some instances, if you reheat last weeks leftovers and end up with a pile of crap that's essentially the same, only worse.  Either way, you're guaranteed a new experience.  I like this one because I've never liked George Michael, and this version strips out the manufactured pop bullshit and actually uses instruments and unaltered voices to convey the emotion of the song.  Well done, Iron and Wine, well done.

I've gotta tell you, I'm pretty excited about the direction music has taken lately.  I'd been feeling like an old fogey when I listen to the radio lately, hating most every song that was coming on.  But now, more and more songs are actually listenable.  Panic! at the Disco is coming out with a new album, and while I've never been a huge fan, they've done a great job of staying true to their sound.  In fact, check this out:

Also, Foo Fighters have a new album that kicks some ass, Lupe Fiasco's new album is damn good, as is the Strokes'.  My wife and I are going to see Mumford and Sons, who are quite enjoyable, Kanye is doing good things and Dre has a new album FINALLY.  I've actually been prompted to put some money down on music for the first time in ages.  Additionally, The Arcade Fire is riding high on the Grammy buzz they received for their awesome The Suburbs.  If you haven't listened to it yet, what the hell's wrong wtih you?

So my friends and I have been ceaselessly ridiculing one another on Facebook, and I noticed something. All my relationships with friends are predicated on being able to take and give a liberal amount of shit without getting offended.  Whether it's being mocked for inadvertently buying and wearing capri pants, being an incorrigible hipster, having an unyielding boner for all things Predator, having a childlike obsession with pro wrestling, or Johnny Depp, or wearing your hair like an out of work 70's porn star none of us every (visibly) get our feelings hurt.

Pictured:  My current hair cut

But my point is, that's the common thread that binds us all.  Some of us have more in common than others, but when we get together, you know, that online bar that is the Cheers of the...what the hell are we calling this decade?  The teens?  Whatever we call it, Facebook is the Cheers of this decade.  Everyone knows each other, and we all live to treat one another like Cliff Clavin.  Shit, I think that joke just showed my age a little too much.  For all you youngins, this is Cliff.

So, what am I getting at?  No, I'm asking you because I have no idea.  What the hell is my point?  That's not the issue.  The issue is that I don't thank the people who keep me in business enough.  I guess that's the 2 people who actually follow this blog.  I was checking my stats before I started rambling, and I get a surprisingly large amount of traffic from Russia.

Now that the cold war is over, Russia gives me the warm fuzzies.

I don't speak Russian, so blame Google if this is insulting. Спасибо

Trivial Bullshit

So it's been a while since I've written anything and I'm sure you my loyal (read: nonexistent) readers assume some pretty marvelous things must be going on in my life to keep me from updating this little personal vanity project.  I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.  You know what's been going on with me?  Well, let's see.  First there was this:

That doesn't look like a rhino to me

That's right.  The common cold.  Stupid thing knocked me flat on my ass for a week, and I'm still dealing with excess mucus.  I hadn't been sick in over a year, and then this little bastard gets in my body and I actually have to miss half a day of work.  I don't want to give off the impression that I'm some kind of workaholic or anything, I don't care for workahol anymore than the next person.  It's just that in sales, if you aren't making calls, you aren't making money.

Pictured:  my profession

So anyways, I muscle through and by the next weekend I'm feeling pretty good.  I'm back to my usual workout routine and come Saturday, I make my way to the field to run bleachers and such.  It should be noted that my masochism is based solely on the idea that pain can make you faster.  So far, the results suggest a "maybe" as the answer.  I think my weakened body betrayed me because next thing you know, I miss a step and get one of these:

This isn't the kind of pain I wanted from the field.

I walk a half a lap thinking "OW, it's not that bad, I can totally just walk th SHIT, OW!  No, I think it's getting better, I should be able to FUCK!  Is my ankle always that swollen?" so I cut my workout short and gimp my ass home.  I spend the rest of the night icing and elevating hoping for the best.  By the way, if you ever sprain your ankle, don't be a dumbass.  Toughing it out will only incur more damage and delay your recovery significantly.  If you think you've sprained your ankle, follow these simple steps to help speed your healing time.  That being said, the next day my wife, some friends and I went to...

The Chandler Ostrich Festival!  It's basically a small carnival with some giant birds.  It was fun, my ankle didn't kill me, and we managed to not spend all of our money.  All in all, it was a great waste of time for a Sunday afternoon.  That night, a very good client of my wife asked to take us out to dinner.

Did you know this guy has a restaurant?

The food was fantastic, the company was great, and the leftovers the next day kicked the crap out of a frozen dinner I would have had otherwise.  Since then, things have settled down.  Oh, wait.  That's not what happened.  My wife caught my cold, had it turn into bronchitis, Japan got hit with an earthquake, then a tsunami, THEN a nuclear reactor leak, we bombed Libya, and did you hear about this guy?

Meh

I have always said that I don't proofread, I also don't read my old self-fellating indulgences blog entries.  But I do believe that I FUCKING TOTALLY CALLED THIS!  That's Randy Quaid, right?  Charlie Sheen, you say.  Well, I touched on him too.  My point is, there's no need to revisit that particular dung heap, as I've already stepped right in that shit and scraped it off my shoe.  The problem is, everyone is forgetting that when a spoiled kid is being annoying, the best thing you can do is ignore it.  That or beat it.  I guess what I'm saying is someone needs to beat Charlie Sheen, then ignore him.

Hey, you know what was a pretty good movie?  Megamind.  I just watched that and enjoyed it more than I thought I would.  Great animation, solid voice work, and very solid choices for the sound track.  Were all the songs they used cliche?  Absolutely, but they were also good songs instead of shit songs they usually use in cartoons.  I give a large amount of credit to the crew at Dreamworks, as this is a trend I first noticed in Shrek, where they take good songs that are appropriate for the situations in the movie instead of just pap that they have the license to.  On a semi-related note, I love that there are like 3 composers that get all the score work in hollywood.  Seriously,  next movie you watch pay attention and the odds are if the movie has any kind of budget either Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, or John Williams did the score for the damn thing.  Don't believe me? Look:

Seriously, with those 3 guys you've got some of the most recognizable movie music ever.  Clearly, as he is wont to do, Tim Burton has a major man crush on Danny Elfman, much as he does with Johnny Depp.  But let's be honest, each of these guys has tied on to at least one director who defaults to them as the person to provide the sonic accompaniment to their vision.  It's like they're kindred spirits in art, inseparable in that each can only provide half, and yet without that other half they will never be whole.  Wow, that was some late night poetic waxing.  I'm sure I'm overthinking this shit, but both media are so powerful, and I think it's cool that they work in the opposite fashion of most people.  Most people are inspired by music, using music to drive them to higher levels of performance.  This isn't just personal opinion, there are studies that back it up.  That's why music video directors are hack movie directors for the most part.  Just look at McG's entire career.  But movie composers work the opposite way.  They draw their inspiration from essentially the spoken word.  I just realized how weird this is getting.  I think I started by talking about my cold.  Whatever.  There are fights on tv to watch, and a beer in the fridge that's calling my name.  Hope your weekend doesn't suck, and we'll see if I can turn this back into a weekly thing now that I'm relatively healthy.

I've got your blog right here

I hate to turn this exercise in vanity in to an even more self serving documentary of my recent running exploits, but I ran a 5k today, so let the self serve begin!

They have my favorite, ME!

Today was the Skirt Chaser 5k in Tempe, and I have to say it was a pretty damn well executed race.  The concept is pretty simple: women start the race 3 minutes before the men and run an out and back 5k course.  At the end, there's beer.  It should be fairly easy to see the appeal of this race.

Drink tickets are my main motivator. 

There are even more benefits if you're single.  You can slap a sticker on your butt saying you're looking for a like minded individual to share in your profound dehydration.  It gets even better if you're a single dude.  According to the MC of the race, there were something in the neighborhood of a 2:1 ratio of ladies to men.  As a married man, all that meant to me was that there were a crapload of people between me and my reward.  I've only done one other 5k in all the races I've done, but this one definitely had a party atmosphere.  There was a ton of people and one of the best local breweries providing libations, in addition to Chipotle providing food as one of the title sponsors.  All I can say is God bless the good people at Chipotle and the work that they do.

Foil has never been more appealing

Anyway, in the eloquent words of my friend Jaime, it was like Halloween, the girls used it as an excuse to dress like whores.  Not all of them, but there were a good amount dressed more for the evening than the day.  Not that I blame them, it was hotter than balls today.  Seriously, if you were to take a measurement of average ball temperature and compare it to today, the temperature today would be equal to or greater than said average ball temperature.  I tell you it was hot, (how hot was it?) It was so hot I saw a squirrel cooling his nuts in the lake.

HIYO

So anyway, my usual run is about 5k as it is, so I didn't really do any additional training for this race.  I knew I had the distance nailed down, so I was just going to pace.  It worked pretty well except for the damn heat.  Also the crowd.  I'm not claiming to be super fast or anything, but I'm fast enough that I felt like I got caught behind a ton of people, particularly at the beginning when we were leaving the start line I somehow got caught behind a couple dudes pushing strollers.  Much respect for trying to stay active when you're a dad and shit, but I was there to run, not chat.  Anyhoo, after the race there was a pretty damn good cover band.  I don't usually give any dap to cover bands because they are just playing someone else's work, but this one played a bunch of songs while I was there and they managed to sound like everyone from vintage U2 to Fallout Boy to The Strokes.  They even sounded like Sublime.  That's a pretty solid set.

I don't know how this happened, but I managed to turn this into a goddamn race review.  I'd call this a digression, but I didn't have anything to digress from.  Oh well.  Anyway, I showered already, but I still smell like sunscreen.  That's one thing that I'm still not sure how I feel about.  I have to wear sunscreen a lot because, you know, fuck cancer, but I don't like smelling like it all the time.  The worst is after a hard workout outside when you have a nice, rank sweat going.  Nothing says "I just worked out" like a crotch that smells like Juarez, unless you pair that with some SPF 35.

Pictured:  my crotch after a workout

It's one of those weird things where all sunscreens smell like perfume, but not really.  I think they're probably trying to hide the smell of all the chemicals, but guess what?  You just end up with horrible, horrible chemically perfume.  The best thing about sunscreen is that when you're done with the day, you feel dirtier than ever.  It's almost like it traps the sweat against you AND gives you the added benefit of letting every single particle of dirt that blows your direction stick to you and make you feel like a fine grit piece of sandpaper.  It's pretty gross, but you know what's even grosser?  Melanoma.  Yeah, it's cancer again.  You know why?  Cancer is a fucker.  I just realized that seems to be a recurring thing in this blog.  I suppose this is NOT the place to come if you are a fan of cancer.  I'm sorry, but hating cancer is something I'm not going to apologize for.  Wait...

Happy early Groundhog Day

Hello Internet. I'm sure you feel neglected, what with me not filling you with incoherent ramblings in the middle of the night. Don't take it personally. Sure, you've gained some weight over the holidays with all the abundant and rich foods, but that doesn't make you any less sexy. Well... Maybe a little. I mean, fitness is important, and not just for your appearance. It's important for your health. I'd hate to see you get diabetes or something. You know fitness is important to me, Iran a half marathon two weeks ago for Christ sake. Yeah, it's hard to find time to get the work in, but you have to make the time and knock out excuses.

The Internet, post christmas.



Holy crap,I don't know what that was all about. I think it's fair to say it's been a little while since I wrote anything on here, but you know what? It's not like I get paid for this shit. Although, if you know of anyone looking to get they're name out there I'm happy to shill for just about anyone. Club baby seals? Who am I to judge? I hear those guys are fuckers and if you pay me I'll tell you exactly why.

I mean look at that thing up there. You know what that face says? Stone cold murderer. My point is that expectations for this thing should be nil. It's free entertainment for you, and weekend homework for me. So welcome back dear readers, I missed you too.

You know what's been pissing me off for a couple weeks? Oatmeal. Who the shit decided that oatmeal was a good thing to eat? It looks and feels just like it tastes, gray. I'm pretty sure someone with too much time on they're hands was in the barn watching their horses eat and, because they hated themselves, said "I think I'm going to try eating anything this giant smelly bastard crams in it's long, stupid face." And after realizing raw oats suck the moisture out of your body faster than Jenna Jameson, decided to try boiling the shit out of them.

The leading cause of dehydration. Also, hard to find a picture of her with a shirt on.


so, the problem with oatmeal is really, that it serves a purpose. In spite of how much I hate it, I eat the damn wallpaper paste nearly weekly. Why do I torture myself like that guy in The DaVinci Code?

Because it works. I try to think of it as fuel. Oatmeal is like high octane racing fuel, and a delicious plate of bacon is like leaded gasoline. Sure, you can put either in your car, but one will gum up the works and eventually ruin your engine, but the other will help you run cleaner and improve your fuel economy. That's what really posses me off the most. As much as I hate it, I've had a god awful symbiotic relationship with it for over ten years. I blame my mom for cooking it for me my senior year when I was playing football. The first game of the season she made me oatmeal before the game and I played great. I kept up the tortuous routine the rest of the season and ended up making all district. I'm not saying it was the oatmeal, but athletics tend to be superstitious, and I bought into it that season. I'm pretty sure I have mentioned my depressing slowness in this self indulgent tripe in the past, but if I haven't, the below picture is a good idea of how slow I have always been

In spite of the fact that you could have timed my 40 yard dash with a calendar, I took up running a few years ago, and after my wife ran a half marathon, I decided I would too. My good friend Jaime helped me train and kept me eating the bane of my existence, and as a result, I posted a 1:42:52 in my first half marathon. Obviously, all the training is what put me in the position to make that happen but he oatmeal is what gave me the fuel. Remember the end of Back to the Future 3 when they use the special logs to make the train go fast? It's kind of like that only it tastes like crap. The moral of the story is fuck oatmeal, unless you have a race or game that day.