Maximum Average

More Than One Could Ask

2010-06-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

To understand. To have it all and need nothing. To turn out the lights and have the time of my life. To revel. To believe. To laugh hard, even when it's a bad joke about a savage Oriental. To Live without darkness in the heart. To fail again and again at giving up vices. To live with it. To know there isn't anything. To know the universe is indifferent. To know that no one has the answers except William S. Burroughs who said no one has the answers. To read William Gibson. To realize that the future won't wait. To heed the call. To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women. To love. To love. To love.

Your Kung Fu is Weak Because Kung Fu is Weak

2010-06-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

Originally envisioned, this blog was a place to record what I hoped would be the movement towards some sort of satori. Physical exercise would be, I hoped, the catalyst to a greater discipline. The greater discipline would lead to a more ordered life.

I've tried pretty much everything now. All sorts of martial arts, workout plans, Crossfit, rock climbing, running, powerlifting, etc. I am an athletic dilettante.

I find over and over that I am often turned off by the culture surrounding a particular activity; yoga too blissed, Crossfit to aggro, MMA too retarded. My last foray into martial arts, one day of Wing Chun Kung Fu, was perhaps the saddest. A room full of dorks and overweight old men twisting their wrists hundreds of times while standing in a knee shearing position just isn't my idea of useful, cool, or effective.

What I want is a forward looking full body regimen that is essentially modern and American, has practical effect in the world, and will provide an hour of thought crushing physical exertion.

Any ideas?

Strong Lifts 5x5

2010-05-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was day 1 of Strong Lifts 5x5 program. Switching from three working sets to five working sets reveals how quickly a body adapts to a specific regimen. Before a crushing case of lazy ass set in, I was moving along quite well with the 3x3 Starting Strength shit.

Strong Lifts is essentially as simple as Starting Strength. I would say it is a little less rotational, meaning each of the two workouts are basically full body, but the internets praise it and I'm trying it.

There isn't really any reason for changing to this plan. I like it because it is simple and fast. Three days a week with about an hour in the gym. I started with a pretty light weight (155 lbs. for squats and 50 lb. dumbbells for bench) yet today I am crazy sore.

The bummer about my gym is that it's so far away. 20 minutes by motorcycle. Almost an hour to get there and back if you include changing out of my biker gear. I think if I could walk to the gym in my workout clothes I'd be more consistent. Unfortunately no other gym is outfitted as well or has the yoga classes I like.

Wish I had the room for a squat rack.

Moving

2010-04-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

Most writing happening at www.chadfred.blogspot.com now.

Bear-Fit

2010-04-08T00:32:00.000-07:00

I love the 70s Big site. Especially in the context of web 2.0 tribalism. Their program and food philosophy does exactly what it's supposed to do, make you big and strong. Fat maybe, but if you've got a big ass beard it doesn't really matter. Lift heavy and drink a ton of milk. I have tried it and can attest that no regimen I have ever done worked as quickly at it's claimed effect than this.

Beards and muscles rule, okay?

Speaking of beards and muscles, I worked at the Castro Market today and the whole god damn scene is like a 70s Big wet dream. Big muscled/fat dudes with facial hair, shorts, and tight 70s t-shirts abound in the Castro. Out here in San Francisco we call them Bears. They're sort of a staple around here. 70s Big should be renamed Bear-Fit.

I think 70s Big just might be unaware of how homoerotic it is. I mean, eating, hanging out with other hairy dudes and picking heavy iron off the ground is as manly as it gets, right? Sure. But look around at the places where guys like this hang out and you realize...They're gay.

Yesterday I found myself in a yoga class. Yeah, yeah. I know. There is no other pursuit as unmanly and indicative of the dreaded 90s Small physique as Yoga. But as I looked around at the incredibly well sculpted abs and asses of the rock climber yogis all around me I was filled with joy. One particular thong right in front of me was just magnificent.

Now what's a dude like me to do? I like lifting weights and I like yoga. I also like rock climbing. Fortunately my gym has all three of these things, so I don't have to go get all retarded joining a million gyms. Now all I need is some sort of program. And here it is:

Wendler 5/3/1 on one day and Yoga on alternating days. Repeat indefinitely. My plan is to maintain the 3 day Wendler schedule (M,W,F) and get the Yoga classes in the rest of the days. I don't plan on keeping a specific rest day. They just seem to come naturally.

The Wendler lifting is basically a single lift worked up to maximal loads (kind of like a 5X5) of the big four lifts (squat, deadlift, benchpress, press) and then two more "assisting" exercises that are decided on by the lifter. Usually the program calls for something variant on the main lift like incline dumbell presses on bench days, but sometimes it calls for an opposite. Basically if you do a push you might want to do a pull; bench and row, as an example.

Conditioning is achieved by hill sprints.

To make it more in line with climbing, the assists I plan to use are hard traverses, frenches, plenty of pullups, and isometric holds. It boils down to 20 minutes or so of lifting and then climbing/bouldering for about 45 minutes.

Conditioning will be achieved by bouldering circuits and occasional hill sprints. No runs of over 3 miles at all.

Today I did the program start benching, dumbell french rows (something I think I made up, basically like frenching where you hold the pullup at various angles for a few seconds, but with a weight), warmed up on a circuit of V0s, and did Planet Granite's ironically named "warmup traverse". I couldn't make it all the way in one continuous attempt so I rested where I fell and continued from the last hold.

I don't anticipate getting really large with this strategy, but I do think I will be very strong. My goal for this is to be around 155 and about 15% stronger than I was at 160 with a good improvement in climbing. After eight weeks of this I want to be able to climb at least a V4.

Nutrition will be dictated by finances and availability of food at the farmer's markets. The expense of getting to 160 lbs was a lot to maintain over a long period of time. I would rather keep food quality high and supplementation low this time around. Being a caveman is really fucking expensive.

I'm not sure at all what effect the Yoga will have other than on my libido. God I love Yoga asses.

Blogs a Plenty

2010-03-24T15:22:00.000-07:00

I've come across some really great blogs lately. Of them, my favorite is D&D With Pornstars. It is basically what you'd imagine; Dungeons and Dragons played with pornstars. While it's not exactly work and family safe the vast majority of the focus is on actual gaming, which I haven't done in nearly 15 years.

One of the reasons I really like this site is that is exegetic in nature. It is about how to make a better story and how to enjoy the people you make that story with. The writing is excellent and the porn thing is handled so lightly that the effect is to normalize it as a career. The odd thing here is that D&D is being played by adults, not that there are pornstars.

I'll admit to being a little jealous of these guys. I wonder what sort of amazing stories I could've come up with if I had matured as I played. Would I have been a really amazing DM? I have friends that never stopped playing RPGs and I often regret the distance I have between them now. They were all really good, funny people drawn together by a creative endeavor. Most of my friends now are bar staff, which is a bit like hanging out with salty old pirates (in a bad way).

I am also forced to re-examine my relationship with narrative creation. I grew up not writing short stories or novels, but games. I had literally dozens of notebooks filled with maps and characters and storylines and whatnot. Whenever I sit down to write a story now I often think about the reader's reaction (even while blogging) and how it will effect them in the real world. How many people went vagabonding after reading On The Road? How many drugs were consumed after reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

This is a habit formed from playing games with small groups and writing to small audiences (Jerry, Chris, this means you). In the old days you could never conceive of a game being extremely large. the closest thing you got to that was some gay LARP action. For some reason I never liked the live action stuff as much as the table top stuff.

I've also been reading The Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark. So far it's not about computers so much as a class struggle between those that create and those that seek to profit from those creations. It pairs very well with my rekindled interest in multi-person narrative methods and I'll hopefully be able to write something more intelligent about the two as I finish the book.

Another book I've been reading is Tribes by Seth Godin. It's one of those books that they make hopeless business school dorks struggling up the corporate ladder read to try and make them "think outside the box". Like The Tipping Point or something. Basically it advances a moderately interesting thesis and seeks to back it up with largely non -replicable examples. The one or two of my remaining Crossfit friends will be interested to note that Crossfit is actually profiled.

The thesis is basically that the future of business/social groups/etc. are smaller tribal systems organized around bold and interesting leadership capable of producing a new idea and growing a community around it while utilizing emerging communications technology

. Interesting enough, but it could've been a twelve page research paper. It fails to address what happens when that group is no longer the newest and boldest or what to do when leadership betrays the most loyal members for the sake of profit (I'm looking at you Crossfit). Presumably you just have to come up with a new idea and run with it.

Philosophical Anarchists will be familiar with the idea that small, autonomous groups work better, but most of the really good Anarchist thought was written way before global economies and Facebook. What now? This is where I believe the Hacker Ethos comes into play. I mean Hacker in the way that I believe McKenzie Wark seems to define it: someone that forges a new creative direction that drives narrative and progress without the permission of controlling interests. Not Angelina Jolie waxing poetic about a 28 baud modem or some shit.

Die Young as Late as Possible

2010-03-22T23:06:00.000-07:00

Career choices were never my strong suit. Despite having nearly zero musical ability I still hold on to the fantasy that one day I will lead a revival of the Outlaw Country sound. I imagine myself to be someone Merle Haggard would've passed the torch too.

This is clearly insane, but not nearly as tragic as the legions of sad bastards that have just enough talent to convince themselves that they are going to make it. How terrible a curse be the three chord lure of fame.

As I've already stated, I have no chance of becoming musical. I'm like Ritchie Tennenbaum; I never developed as an artist (though not of the type that paints creepy portraits of a sister).

The dark clouds of Law School have been gathering for some time and I believe nothing short of a miracle will disperse them. It wouldn't be a bad life. It could even be fun. I have this imaginary scenario in my head where I only do DUIs and divorces. My card wold say either "Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts" or "Specializing in tearing apart what only got can craft" (sort of a biblical reference). I also think making a criminal defense card that looks like the "Get out of Jail For Free" card from Monopoly would be mildly hilarious. Maybe instead of free it would have my hourly rate.

In other news, my wife is out of town, leaving me to my own devices which basically means marathon viewing of The Wire and late night meat cooking. Right now I've got a buffalo stew simmering in old wine from the bar I work at. When she's not around I guess I'm even more boring than usual.

The Mind Eraser and Why Ordering it Makes You Stupid

2010-03-13T19:40:00.001-08:00

Our barback has begun his bartending training. He poured drinks for a slow hour and from the twinkle in his eye it was apparant that he was happy with his mild promotion to pouring barback. He's a good kid and will probably make a good bartender. I was reminded of my first bar shift and the awful Goldschlager Apple Pucker concoction I was so proud of.

If I could go back to that moment and time I would have told myself to quit immediately. I would have said, "Chad, no matter what you decide to do it will be better than this."

Ten years and I could've been a doctor. Ten years and I could've been anything. Even a ten year veteran of Best Buy with a little motivation would probably have been promoted.

After a year or so of not fucking up too bad, a bartender will probably have the best shifts at the bar they work at. If it's a busy bar, then you've peaked. That's it. Good Friday and Saturday nights with a few other mildly lucrative shifts are all you can hope for.

You could put on a fedora or something and pretend to be an alchemist, but that's just posturing. Even if you went to a farmer's market to buy some weird fruit for your newest mixology breakthrough you're still not going to be doing much better than you are in this first year or two. You'll probably be single (or you should be) and able to keep your expenses low. You can live a decent life for a little while as a bartender, but there is a tight window of about fve years.

After five years of bartending you need to be doing one of three things:

1. Finishing up a Masters Degree, PHD, JD, or some other door opening set of letters
2. Managing a bar with the specific plan to open your own bar or restaurant
3. Making connections to move into the sales side of booze sales (liqour rep)

The first would be my preference. If I had been a little smarter with my time and less afraid of being in debt (which is stupid because debt happened anyway) I would be well into my first year of law school. I was stupid and delusional and thought some other things I had planned on would be coming through by now. I was wrong. Now I'm another year in debt and probably two years from being able to start law school. I fucked up bad.

The second path is for the alcoholic entrepreneur. The person that is capable of high fiving the rich clowns that are always able to open bars without experience can often find themselves in a managerial postition. Honestly, if I wasn't such a miserable basterd, this would've been a good route for me, too. There's about a fifty fifty chance that you will either burn out and fuck running things up bad while simulataneously developing a huge coke habit or you will meet the investors that will help you open up your own spot.

Bar owners that worked their way up from behind the rail are always amazing to me. To have worked for years at a profession I have really come to loathe (for me personally, maybe not for everyone) and decided to stay in it forever and thrive is tough. The rewards can be good, though. A dude that owns a pretty solid dive can barely work after a while and just count the dollars if his or her crew is solid.

The third route seems to be popular for people that are less interested in rolling the dice on their own enterprise and prefer old school forty hour work week shit (though this is changing). You get to wear a suit to work and you don't have to serve customers. Some people that really like drinking are stoked that they get to spend money on drinks as part of their jobs.

Anyway, on to the Mind Eraser.

The Mind Eraser was sort of the go to performane oiented shot before dropping shots into glasses of Red Bull became the hip thing. It works like this:

Pour Kahlua and vodka over ice in a high ball glass and splash soda on top. Then put a straw in and suck the liquid out as hard as you can from the bottom.

It's kind of a layered drink, but the vodka and Kahlua don't really have much of a difference in viscosity and the ice will defeat any effort to really create a noticeable separation. There may be some kind of kweer swizzle stick "startender" way of making a pronounced layer, but in a high volume setting you would be foolish to employ it.

One of the reasons I hate this drink so much is that people almost always look at the drink and wonder where the "layer" is. They stare at it like a fucking art critic and wonder why they aren't toasting with some neopolitan looking delight. Look, five deep at a bar, I don't care at all whether or not the college oriented well cocktail you just ordered is perfect. Just suck the straw and kick rocks.

If you want to see pretty layers, order a B-52 or whatver the kids are calling the Guinness/cider mix these days. Those liquids actually separate without much fuss, even in a hurry.

If you think about it, the Mind Eraser is just a milkless, bubbly White Rusian. Order that. Then at least I am reminded of the Big Lebowsky and can replay scenes in my head while I count down the minutes till I can leave.

I'm going to go shoot myself now. That or eat some cereal (fuck Paleo).

Jail Vegan Mothers

2010-03-11T09:56:00.001-08:00

Ex-Crossfit affiliate Whole 9 is one of several medium profile (high profile compared to other Crossfit sites/ low compared to T-Nation) training sites advocating a paleo lifestyle eating approach. They have a post about what to do with vegetarians you can read HERE.

Living with a vegan I care about I have two primary concerns:

1. Adequate B12
2. Dealing with eating with this person

The B-12 thing is tricky. Surf any of the big vegetarian fitness sites and you will see that many people are basically fucked. There are a lot of unhappy people reporting about how after years of taking over the counter supplements their B-12 levels are low and they're feeling the effects. Most reports of unhealthy vegan babies are directly related to B-12 deficiency (this is from the veg sites, though I'm going to be lazy here since I'm at work and not put a better citation).

Some of these folks report positively about B-12 injections, but signing yourself up for regular visits to a doctor because of diet is, to me, unhealthy behavior.

Another option for the Veg-heads is to eat very small amounts of animal products raised well (pastured eggs/ grass fed beef liver). I can never find any useful, unbiased consensus about whether or not eggs are good or bad for you. The only thing most people seem to agree on (unless you are a factory shill) is that pastured, organic, cage free, eating bugs, chilling outside eggs are best. I get my eggs from Soul Food Farm and their chickens have a pretty damn good life.

The best source of B-12 comes from animal liver. Regardless of how you feel about the way it gets to the table, the available science is pretty clear on this. Various books and articles I've read suggest that about 4 ounces a week is enough to get by.

At my day job I have sold quite a bit of calf's liver to pregnant vegetarian women who are concerned about the health of their baby. This is as it should be. If you are more concerned about the life of a well cared for grass fed cow than you are about the health of the unit you're about to pump out, you need to get your head checked. A tiny steak a week for 9 months is not much of a price to pay for a non-retarded child with normal sized genitals.

B12 deficiency drastically reduces the potency of breast milk. Soy juice for babies is also a joke. We have all this outrage against crack babies and shit, but heroin and crack cocaine are actually not transferred through placental or umbilical tissue. Read about it HERE. Soy milk kills babies and vegan mother's milk is essentially unfit. If we are punishing drug addicts for perceived harm we should be throwing the book at women causing actual harm.

So here's my platform: Jail Vegan Mothers

Of course there are the outliers. Yes, there are super healthy vegans. I'll give you dorks UFC fighter Mac Danzig. But check it, he wasn't always vegan and a significant amount of his muscle building and training was done with regular old dairy industry byproduct protein shakes. It is impossible to say where he would be if he was weaned on hemp and apples and went all the way with zero animal products.

My second problem living with a vegan is eating together. For all major holidays and anniversaries (except for my birthday, when it is observed) we are stuck going to Millennium. Now don't get me wrong, this place has awesome food. It is as good as it gets for vegans. Give me a break on the prices, though. How can a place that only sells vegetables cost more than a really good steak house? It's bullshit. The bill for our Valentine's Day dinner was nearly $200. Keep in mind neither of us drink, so the price reflects only the pre-fix menu and undeserved 20% tip.

The only other bummer about this joint is that it suffers from the vegetarian server curse ("uh, like, uh, are you guys ready or something? Wait. I think I forgot to order part of your meal"). The food is always great, but I never shake the feeling my entree should have come with a medium rare filet.

I think soy is toxic waste and luckily my wife basically agrees, so we aren't living with boxes of gluten soy nuggets and shit taking up valuable meat space in the freezer, but somehow, her "ethical" choice to not eat animals always trumps my "health" decision to eat them. This isn't just my own lame passivity. World wide the argument that an ethical choice is somehow unassailable is a given.

But what about this: I think that a relationship where one person chooses a health destroying regime is unbalanced. If I were to trump up an ethical reason why shooting dope into my system was somehow okay, do I get to chase the dragon all day? Someone really needs to invent a reason why playing Call of Duty till dawn is morally necessary.

Now, to be honest I'm amplifying my grievances for the sake of making a point. My wife and I make this work pretty well (except the holiday thing) because animal or no animal, our focus is on fresh seasonally available food cooked well and moderately portioned. There are others out there that are chomping down McSoy by the bucket load and getting healthy ( read grossly overweight and weak).

I work for one of the most ethically sound meat companies on the planet. I should have a better argument to take this bullshit "ethical" shield and smash it to pieces, but I don't. Paul Chek has a pretty good spiel about the circle of life, but it's a bit like He-Man re-enacting the Lion King.

The take away from this post is this: if veganism is clearly unhealthy and requires Western medicine to function optimally, why doesn't the ethical basis for choosing this diet fall under greater scrutiny and generate a respectful, effective debunking?

Paleo-lebrities and Paleo ethics (long post)

2010-03-10T10:10:00.000-08:00

Every dietary trend has its big name super star and adherents. Atkins, Cordain, Sears; the list of diet gurus is pretty much endless. They all basically start the same way. They ask what are people doing and why is it not working? Some of them test a variety of theories, some of them extrapolate on what works for them.

An example of the latter is Brendan Brazier's Thrive diet. That dude is an ethical Vegan first and a professional triathlete second. The combination of his lifestyle and training goals overlapped into a regimen that was, for him, beneficial. His raw veganism is tempered with a very specific and well thought out manipulation of food intake depending on his daily, sometimes, hourly trainig and lifestyle needs.

Thrive Diet is essentially for vegans what Paleo-Diet For Athletes is for paleo-heads. I have some experience trying both and have found each did more or less what they claimed to do (at least in the short term). They each have a lot in common, differing mainly in protein sources. Paleo uses animal products, Thrive uses a variety of food combinations and raw supplements.

Interestingly enough, for me, Thrive diet was the most effective for sustained energy levels and leaning out. Pigging out 70s Big style (GOMAD, cheeseburgers, steaks, huge portions) was the best for performance gains.

On paper paleo appears to be a nice in between, and perhaps the best way to maximize the body. This is afterall, what we were "designed to eat" (I'll get into what this means to me and why I think it is at best a humorous sales tactic another time).

A primary reason Thrive was easier than paleo for me has to do with my wife, who is vegan (for the simple reason that she does not want to kill animals, I know every counter argument to this ever made, so folks, there is no reason to rehash them here). During the time I was eating all veggies and making weird raw bars we were on the same page for all meals. We saved money on food, enjoyed cooking together, and actually had a fairly peaceful month together ( we are a notoriously fiesty and argumentative couple, but very loving). When you are talking about reducing stress and cortisol you had better consider having a happy significant other because let me tell you, no amount of Crossfit is as draining as an unhappy wife.

A secondary reason is that the veg-heads have had a solid 100+ years of promoting their lifestyle and pretty much everyone will understand what it means to say you are vegetarian or lactose intolerant (the old fall back of vegans who don't want to explain why they don't want the vegetarian cheese plate). In San Francisco you can get some vegan option basically wherever you go. At this place in history it is easier to be vegan than paleo. Sure, you can get a bunless burger or whatever, but that shit always seems weird and when your buddy is eating your fries, you will experience severe emotional torture.

The Paleo Diet is anti-social. I'm not saying this is bad, it's just that trying to explain to a restaurant or dinner host that you only eat evolutionarily appropriate grass fed and gluten free foods is fucking weird. This may slowly change, though. I remember a time in New Orleans when there was only one terrible vegetarian restaurant. Actually, there still is only one, and it's still terrible, but the point is, even in New Orleans you can eat vegetarian at a few different places now. There's a joint in Berkeley called Gather that is reasonably paleo-friendly now. Maybe if enough Vibram's footed weirdos go there it will get huge

Personally, I don't believe that Paleo will ever reach the mainstream acceptance that vegetarianism has because it has no easily articulated moral center. Now, I get that the more ecologically savvy modern cave man can drum up a variety of reasons why eating paleo is ethical, but all of those reasons are very hard to prove definitively to someone that doesn't want to be convinced. If they were, we would be closing factory farms every day.

That it's kind of sad that something has to die to make meat is basically accepted by just about everyone. Even the most die hard hunter probably feels a little bad for the pain a misplaced shot causes a deer that has to be tracked, bleeding. Even Mr. grass fed beef superstar himself, Joel Salatin, has talked about experiencing sadness at killing a particularly kindly old cow. Death is sad, even when you get a ribeye afterwards.

The closest relative Paleo has to a quasi-spiritual ethical narrative are the slow food locavore types. They are trying to wind the clock back to pre-industrial habits as well, but for the most part they aren't concerned with performance modalities and other athletic pursuits (there are for sure some overlap, Paul Chek and his disciples as an example, but they are hardly the norm). The biggest divide here is probably bread. How are you going to explain to Alice Waters that you can't eat her fresh bread because you diagnosed yourself with gluten intolerance after experiencing a two second increase in your "Fran" time?

This is kind of rambling now, but let me get back to a few points:

1. A diet will be hard to sustain indefinitely without the support of your environment
2. vegetariansim is life time doable because of global efforts to popularize it.
3. an ethical base has allowed vegetarianism to thrive
4. without an ethical base, paleo will die or become as marginal as something like Sugar Busters (remember that diet?)
5. If paleo has anything going for it, it is health and performance benefits, but
a. those performance benefits are crushed by other anabolic based regimens and
b. similar health benefits (lessening the effects of the damages of modernity) are observed in other vegetarian diets.

My claim here is that paleo, without an ethical drive, will not be widely adopted and will be discontinued by the vast majority of folks who champion it now. People who are drawn to it for performance reasons will stop for two reasons: 1. they become less interested in performance or 2. they find more effective (but inarguably less natural) ways to get bigger, stronger, faster.

Health reasons may have people sticking around, but they will probably be drawn to more traditional eating plans (Nourishing Traditions/ Weston A. Price/ Slow Food) that allow them to have better connections with their family circle and traditional foods.

So does paleo need this ethical drive? Well, that all depends on if you are someone currently jockeying to make money off of it. If you're Loren Cordain or Robb Wolf, or Melissa Urban, or any of the many other post-Crossfit quasi-celebrities you need it to last as long as you don't want a different career. And to be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with pursuing a career that revolves around making people fitter. I actually think, given our healthcare crisis, any worker that is involved in fitness should be receiving tax incentives.

The winds will change and interval training will eventually be replaced by something else (probably a watered down version of the I, Bodybuilder program; I think this will trickle down the way conventional bodybuilding splits did in the early eighties).

More weird studies will probably discover something else is really effective (the all jellyfish diet!) and then paleo will be a bunch of books sitting on the shelf of a thrift store somewhere (joining my Zone books).

Those that truly believe in this lifestyle really need to get on articulating some ethical reasons why it deserves to catch on or get started on learning about that Jellyfish diet.

Now it does warrant mentioning that there are a handful of neo-pagans out there advocating hunter gatherer lifestyle shit for the purposes of getting closer to their horned gods and whatnot. Their freak flag is flying high.

Also, if you are an anti-modernist in the vein of John Zerzan or other anti-agriculturists, then eating paleo could be a deeply political act, but I have never seen these ideas advanced by any other fitness oriented person other than myself.

My interest in paleo is now primarily a critical one. By that I don't mean I am only around to criticize it (I leave that to Moynihan Institute). I am interested in it as a subcultural phenomenon tied to food politics. My inspiration for this actually my old Professor Dale Carrico's examination of Singularity and its fanboys. He has been writing about an even more obscure group of True Believers for a long time now and I always find it fascinating.

Alice in Wack Movie Land

2010-03-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

Alice in Wonderland was really a letdown. The first problem with it was that it promises to be the harbinger of really bad 3-D. Alice was shot in 2-D and then rendered into a 3-D film. No matter what your jaded mind tells you about how lame the storyline of Avatar was, you can't deny how good it looked. Each shot was planned from the start to include the extra-dimensionality and the whole film is immersive.

During the entre time I watched Avatar I kept seeing really fresh design and cinematography. Not so for Goth overlord Tim Burton's lame shit.

Alice has all the corny 3-D you expect from a kids movie. It's basically as textured as a 3-D comic book until it's time for something to fly out at you. Since it was so huge at the box office we're basically in store for all kinds of clumsy 3-D movies that really aren't what they claim to be.

Alice also suffers from extremely boring Burton-isms. Watching this movie is like listening to the hundreth Bad Religion album. Nothing new since the eighties. The hedges were clearly from Edward Scissorhands, the Jabberowky is like a rejected Reign of Fire Dragon, the White Queen is a Forever 21 version of the Elf Queen from LOTR. Crispin Glover is always watchable, but here he is the tall man from Charlie's Angels, just with an eye patch.

Oh, and why exactly doesn't the evil cat kill and eat Alice? If you poked my eye out and tried to offer it to me I would fuck you up. Also, wouldn't a giant Ogre Alice probably have a better time killing the Jabberowky? Eat that cake bitch!

Worthless. Fucking Worthless.

PR Stuff

2010-03-09T14:06:00.000-08:00

Last week I deadlifted a personal best of 325#. Yesterday I hit a 170# 1rm on the bench (which is huge for me and about 15# over my best. I also managed a 232 # backsquat (that is 42 # over my total last year).

I remain injury free and relatively lean, though my wife complains that my "neck muscles" are starting to look unattractive. Lame. It's pretty miserable to go about something unsupported. I ususally lift alone and any shift away from a super lean "Fight Club" abs physique is generally hated upon by my wife.

There are those of you that from the safe distance of bachelorhood can say it shouldn't matter, but it is extremely demoralizing to have something you've worked hard on for a long time be met without enthusiasm. The other side of the bum out is that even with years of concentrated effort I am still just strong for me, not strong for the human species. Oh well.

I'm at the point now where I'm about to give up on all physical pursuits except heavy lifting. No matter how many miles I ride I still hate bicycles. Every time I get on one I think "this sucks" why dos anyone do this?"

Martial arts are out as well. I have wasted thousands of dollars over the years training in a variety of environments. I learned neither discipline nor combat prowess. Honestly, most of the martial arts training I've been through just wasn't worth it for me. I broke bones (my toes), bruised ribs, got horrible skin rashes, pulled muscles in my back, and narrowly avoided cauliflower ear for not much benefit.

I'll probably still do bouldering. I actually enjoy it and the gym I go to has the best weights in the city. I'm likely to ditch my Mission Cliffs membership because the place is crowded and full of dirt bags. Their weight room is super crappy as well.

I am also committed to reading no nutrition or diet blogs ever again. That shit is a waste of time.

The End

2010-03-09T11:30:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite endings to an historical fiction is when there is a voice over explaining what happened to all the characters after the events of the story. An excellent example of this is Band of Brothers (which I finally finished watching last night). From the strength of this work alone I have to agree with historians that refer to WWII vets as the greatest generation.

Returning Iraq vets might feel differently (although some of the ones I've spoken with don't) but men like me just aren't anchored to life with any strong experiences like those portrayed in the series. Most of the guys and girls I know only have the shared experience of shitty jobs and tyrranical (or absent) bosses to bind them.

I've been reading this book called War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. The gist is that war is basically the pinnacle of moments defining cultures. At no time is anything more powerful a framer of conciousness than conflict.

So far, I can't disagree. I feel like the male mind especially craves conflict and challenge. War is the ultimate test of man. Maybe men just crave war. I could be really wrong on this one, but whenever I imagine myself "making a difference" I always imagine myself as a combat medic. I never imagine myself helping the disenfranchised. Perhaps it's a fault.

Fuck you, fuck you all.

2010-03-07T17:25:00.001-08:00

Watch a few episodes of Band of Brothers and you'll know you're a pussy, that you haven't sacrificed shit. Listen to anyone that made music before computers and you'll know you're being cheated now. I haven't bought an album made after 2001 in years.

The food you get sucks. The people who serve it hate you. I know, I'm one of them.

Talk to anyone at work and bring up the government or work or politicians or welfare or anything that used to be considered right wing craziness and you're going to be shocked if you're hoping to hear liberal mindedness.

People aren't able to articulate what's wrong so much, but they feel it in their bones that something's wrong and it's getting worse. The voice of the Right on TV is as corrupt as the voice of the Left on TV. A bunch of ghouls and hucksters are pitching us bullshit and we're waking up.

Paleo No Mas

2010-03-04T17:16:00.000-08:00

So, I really wanted to unleash my inner cave man, but Jesus, what a terrible experience. For over a week I did the Paleo-diet as prescribed by the cave dudes in the know (Robb Wolf, Art De Vany, etc.). I understand that they all say it takes a few weeks to adjust or whatever, but I am doubtful about this for my body.

When I did a month of Veganism I found that in some ways I immediately felt more in line with what the adherents of this diet claim; I felt lighter, I lost body fat, I wasn't concerned about the morality of killing something just for food, wait, I'm usually not anyway, but still, my Vegan self had no guilt. Just for an actual reason rather than general sociopathic tendencies.

These are my observations from one week on "Paleo":

1. I felt dog shit tired all the time, my sleep was poor, I was irritable.
2. Weights that I had lifted with ease the week before felt very heavy
3. My mental focus plummeted.
4. I was unable to eat a bunch of delicious, free food at the Farmer's Market
5. I was tortured by the smell of bbq pork sliders at work, making me an even more miserable bartender.
6. I lost weight, probably some fat, but my muscles felt drained.
7. My marriage suffered as I was unable to coordinate any meal with my wife.

Robb Wolf says that you should give any new diet thirty days and see how you feel. I've done thirty days of mostly raw vegan and other than a plateau in strength gains, I felt great.

I've also kept a sort of thirty plus days of a more Nourishing Traditions/Weston A. Price/Whole Foods eating plan. This includes raw milk, seasonal produce, the occasional sweet treat at the market, a batch of my wife's vegan food, whatever. I would say it is a more holistic approach and really more sustainable.

I also actually made my best strength gains following this approach.

Another element to this whole crazy diet thing that most of these so called devotees never really address is the culture you are in. What do you do if you live in a place that is mostly serviced by a Wal-Mart? There are countless small towns that operate this way. Do you follow paleo, but with factory meats and non-organic pesticide laden fruits and nuts? How healthy could that be?

Living in the Bay Area rules. You can pretty much follow and experiment with whatever dietary trend you want. All meat? No problem. Local Grass Fed Meat? No Problem. Goats raised and slaughtered to the whims of a lunar cycle? Unbelievably, not a problem.

Once you get past all the bullshit posturing and marketing only two things work. Consistency and moderation. No matter what work out regimen you follow, if you are consistently showing up and doing more or better work, you will get healthier. If you make an effort to not eat too much fucked up food, you will get healthier. Do both and you're golden.

I am a little enamored with the paleo-trend. It's weird, it seems to be working for a lot of people, but so did Atkins/Sugar Busters/South Beach, etc. It's important to remember that all the big names in this whole paleo crowd are all hoping to be the next big name in the diet scene (and not necessarily for bad reasons). The gradual success of the Paleo diet, if it comes, will mean a lot of money for the primary writers. Just look up domain names and see what's already been taken with the words paleo, hunter-gatherer, or any other caveness. Smart money would be on buying up a bunch of those domain names.

But is the Paleo diet for me? Not as long as I have taste buds to please and muscles to grow.

Extremely Paleo

2010-02-28T20:46:00.000-08:00

Eating raw animal products sort of requires a leap of faith. If you grew up in a dumb ass suburb like I did then you're basically programmed to think and fear a certain way. If it doesn't come in a clean little container and isn't burned to a crisp, well how safe could it possibly be?

I'm sticking my toes in the water. So far I've been consuming raw milk like crazy, had a handful of raw buffalo meat, and one raw egg consumed Rocky style. I buy raw almonds (when I can, fucking government).

I've tried raw vegan for a few weeks before and actually felt really good. I lost a ton of weight and didn't really get any stronger, but my moods were good, my allergies were gone, and I slept deeply. If there was a safe source of raw meats available (and for me they are) it might be worth trying raw paleo.

Truly strange, but hey, who gives a shit?

People scared by the micro-biology boogyman will probably scoff, but I'm going to add more of this neanderthal cuisine into my diet.

On an unrelated note: Vibrams Five Fingers are sold out nationwide. Fuckers.

The Distinguished Gentleman

2010-02-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

Eddie Murphy's Distinguished Gentlemen gets it right. Senators not doing much for the sake of pulling in as much money as they want. Rich men need the hangman's noose.

Anyway, yesterday I pulled an all time best of 325 lbs. off the floor in the deadlift. That's a fifteen pound jump from my previous 1 rep max attempt during Crossfit. Getting to a 2x bodyweight deadlift is the beginning of a move towards decent strength. I'll probably test the old backsquat in a few weeks after I move some front squats into the rotation. I'd be happy to hit 225 lbs.

Paleo-Mood Swings

2010-02-27T11:57:00.000-08:00

I'm like three days into no bread and I need to be put on suicide watch. I'm low energy, low motivation, low funds (this has nothing to do with diet, just my general state). Most of the literature on eliminating grains warns of a pretty crappy adjustment period, so it's to be expected.

Didn't make it to the gym yesterday. I felt hammered. I should've made it, especially considering I didn't end up working last night.

I need to write a book about bartending from the perspective of someone against it as a profession.

A bartender needs to do one of two things. Either bartend just long enough to get some medium sized life goal accomplished (like college) or bartend and save every single penny for the purpose of opening a bar. Anything else is stupid.

Pretty much no opportunities come from bartending. Sure, you might find yourself managing a bar or being offered a different bar job, but you will learn nothing you haven't learned in your first six months behind the bar, except new ways to hate people. You will wake up exhausted every single day. Your day will always be dreadful because no matter how fun the sunlight was, you still have to go to work.

There was a time when bartending at least had a bit of freedom to it, but the IRS and the ABC and even the FDA are slowly choking the life out of what was once at least a pretty good profession for an unmotivated slacker.

I guess it's cool if you want to own a bar, lots of people that do have a solid amount of free time, but you are basically anchoring yourself to a life of escapism and degeneration. That's if you are lucky enough to not have your livelihood destroyed by some sort of litigation.

Christ. I need to get out of this shit. This soul sucking shit. The words bartending and bartender aren't even recognized by spell check.

What Is Best In Life?

2010-02-22T21:41:00.000-08:00

These days I don't have too many enemies to crush, but I have defeated my old nemesis the under two hundred pound backsquat. Today I did a 200lb. five rep max for three sets. It felt pretty good, but I was feeling light headed on the last rep of each set (in a good way). I think 225 is pretty achievable by this Winter. It'll be some time before I test any 1 rep max, but I feel pretty good.

My overhead press is still at 110. Weighted pullups are getting better as are weighted dips. I remember seeing a guy do dips with a 45 lb plate hanging from a belt a few years ago. It seemed impossible at the time, but now I can do it too.

Fueling my efforts was my first attempt at making a buffalo chuck roast stew. I braised the bad boy in Blue Bottle coffee and my own from scratch mole sauce. It turned out pretty well. Oddly enough I went to Tommy's Joint for the first time tonight and tried their buffalo stew just to compare. I think mine was way better, but that probably has more to do with the quality of the meat I used.

It's pretty amazing how the simplest advice always works. I'd been hearing for years that the key to strength gains was simply eat well and be consistent. I ignored this to my own detriment. Instead of eating like a beast and lifting heavy shit and not skipping workouts I allowed myself to waste years of time and effort learning gimmicky shit on the internet. How many ways do you need to be able to throw a medicine ball?

It's not all bad, though. I never really fucked myself up too bad and all of that experimentation really did lead to a pretty decent understanding of what works for me and what doesn't. I don't plan on changing my workouts much at all in the next few months beyond sticking two sprint days in somewhere. Things are good.

Five More Pounds

2010-02-19T19:45:00.000-08:00

Body weight dipped to 157lbs. today, but my backsquat went up to 195 for 5RM. Rockin'.

I was at Planet Granite tonight (between work shifts) and was shocked/stoked to see five different people using all the available squat racks with good form and not in the middle of some hokey ill conceived floor space sucking circuit. This shit is catching on.

The one girl squatting had a big ass. Just noticing.

I've noticed that my sex drive has increased dramatically lately. It's probably extra HGH being released from my body during the squats. Seriously, I've been like a knuckle biting Lenny or Squiggy. I've also been a bit more decisive/aggro. I must be getting roid rage from my raw milk. Better calm down as I'm still in the service industry.

Speaking of that, I can't say again how much I hate bartending. This career really sucks. It's basically a hybrid job. It's part minimum wage retard job and part half assed waiter. In a high volume setting there really is no difference between what I do mechanically and what a busy burger flipper does. Burger boy puts meat on a bun. I put liquid in a cup.

The "skill" part of bartending is essentially just memorizing about thirty drinks (there are more and I probably know hundreds, but you don't really need to know much more thanthe basics to make a living) or pretending that what you are doing is cool.

All these mixology dorks are way over hyped. Mostly they're either nerdy waiters who had way too much time on their hands and found some obscure concoctions that are palatable not so much as unusual (putting raw egg in a drink isn't special, dudes) or total schills for some liqour company. Fucking nerds.

The worst part is that the bulk of your income is dependant on the good will of total strangers that only get stupider and more obnoxious as the night wears on. You can give the absolute best service, comp drinks, high five shit heads in sweater vests, and still get a big fat zero.

On my old blog some dude called me out on my whinyness and I am forever thankful for it. He was right. It is my fault that I am a bartender. I can quit whenever I want and I am there of my own free will. For now I am going to bide my time and use bartending for the one thing it's good for, the hours.

Bartending is only really good for making money while you pursue something else during the day. And I've got some good shit cooking.

Wrecked

2010-02-18T10:19:00.000-08:00

I had a bunch more PRs yesterday that I won't bother detailing. Consistency in training and diet are key to these massive gains. I am even more convinced that it doesn't really matter what sort of exercise regimen you follow as long as it is very challenging, done regularly, and accompanied by an appropriate amount of whole food nutrition.

I am essentially training like a beginner learning the powerlifting game with occasional social rock climbing.

Today I am wrecked, though. I didn't get enough to eat yesterday and I barely got any sleep. Last night at work we had the kind of shitty food stamp collecting gangsterfied hip hop night that Ritch St. was well known for in the past. There were a bunch of clowns swilling Hennessey and coke or Patron and pineapple. I awoke full of hate, my wallet lean.

That's no way to keep cortisol levels in line.

Cortisol and HGH levels seem to be high on the list of factors in developing a healthy, strong body. The HGH makes shit strong, low cortisol makes it repair fast. Other than injecting it, human growth hormone is most efficiently produced by extreme movements (heavy squat, brutal dealift, balls out sprinting). Cortisol raising is caused by a variety of stressors from poor food to shitty jobs. Exercise is also a stressor, but a necessary one.

I think I've pretty much got the exercise side down. As long as my body responds to heavy weights I'll be fine. I certainly would inject HGH as I get older if it was affordable. The science behind it is very strong and I see no moral reason not to fight age related weakness tooth and nail. Right now, it is not an issue.

Cortisol reduction is an area I'd like to know more about. A vegan fitness book I read last year claims that dietary acidity effects cortisol. Choosing a plant based diet reduces acidity and cortisol, or so the claim goes. I tried it for a solid month and noted some positives and negatives.

I was rarely sore, rarely tired, and able to do longer workouts (like climbing after lifting) with a more sustained energy level. Body fat wasn't an issue at all. I actually felt too lean.

The negatives as I see them are performance based. I plateaued quickly, didn't put on any muscle mass, couldn't lift more. Even while consuming a massive amount of a very expensive vegan protein supplement I didn't really improve. The moment I added grass fed meat and milk I started making fast progress.

It's worth adding that I think the reasons for going vegan are valid but largely moralistic and that if you believe factory farming is bad, animal exploitation is evil, and that you shouldn't kill to live, that's fine. A person with such an outlook should be pleased with the available health benefits veganism offers (if there are any) and place a higher priority on their beliefs than their lifts.

It would be very expensive for a person to follow the nutrition plan I am on. I eat as much grass fed beef, local vegetation, and raw milk as I can get my hands on. Even with a work related discount, food is my primary expense. I estimate that the milk I will have drank at the end of my Starting STrength program will have run me about 800-900 dollars. No small amount.

I believe that a person interested in fitness that has the means should pursue organic food and grass fed beef as an integral part of their diet. Nutritionally dense foods have made a huge difference in my fitness as of late. Sure it's expensive, but so is cancer and a variety of other fucked up modern diseases caused by eating clown meat.

Besides, what are you saving that money for? A Porsche? Sending that rotten creature that fell out of your significant other's vagina to school? Fuck that. Self actualize. Opt out of the factory food system and get fucking strong.

More Experiments

2010-02-15T16:12:00.001-08:00

Today before I worked out I decided to change things a bit. Usually I have a protein shake of some sort an hour or so before starting. Today I fasted up to that time and ate 1/2 a pound of nearly raw buffalo meat, some cashews, and an apple.

Moments after consuming this feast I felt extremely charged and headed to the gym. After warm up consisting of 1000m of rowing, some dynamic stretching, and some pushups/pullups/situps rounds I began to feel a little mental fatigue.

I managed to hit 3x5 back squats for 190# (a new PR) with no problem. I felt strong, but sort of tired. Bench pressing without a spot is always a little sketchy, but I decided to work with the weight I was up to (155#). First and second rounds were good, but I failed at two on the last set. Fortunately Planet Granite has a pretty good catch system so there was no need for embarassing cries for help.

After the bench I did weighted pullups (3x5 with 25# added) superset with weighted dips (3x5 with 45 # added).

As a finisher I did five sets of 80-90# one arm rows with ten pushups in between.

I felt a little shorted on my chest so I decided to use a cable machine to experiment with Charles Polequin's Time Under Tension theories. I did cable flies with a five second down/up interval and managed just a few reps with the machine set to 35# each arm. This was intreresting as it reminded me of how doing frenches (a rock climbing related pullup exercise) feels, just with chest.

Time Under Tension is supposed to boost hypertrophy from what I understand, but I think it may be pretty useful for climbing as well as it puts weight on odd, but safe angles of lifts. I would like to try it on the bench as I have been experiencing relatively small gains there as compared to other lifts.

Post workout meal was a quart of raw whole milk. I have been nothing but surprised at how easy this stuff has been on my system. Zero gas, zero mucus build up, zero allergies. Food of the gods, suckers.

Laptops and Labor

2010-02-15T11:45:00.000-08:00

My computer is now operating at a speed the slow moving Comcast turtles would probably approve of. My laptop is now almost seven years old, a pretty good run. I figure I'm just about due for a new one. I am buying the absolute bottom of the barrel iBook this time.

Years ago I had fantasies of video editing and learning deep programmer skills, HTML wizardry, and all manner of computer related madness. I bought the most expensive laptop possible and proceeded to do nothing but write papers and browse the internet. Honestly, if the iPhone had a word program and a remote keyboard I probably wouldn't even get a new computer. I'm going to have to wait months anyway, the government's taking another big chunk of change from my already depleted income.

I never really cared to much about getting rich or living an extravagant lifestyle, but it would be nice to not have to make the choice between updating an appliance that gets used everyday and paying taxes. It would be nice to just do both. Or even just have enough money for some new pants.

The crazy thing is that my income, despite being low, is the highest it has ever been in my adult life. The problem is, so are my expenses. There are three major expenses in my life that consistently destroy my ability to save: my motorcycle, the food I eat, and the holidays.

The motorcycle would be the easiest to rid myself of. I divided what I paid for the bike, cost of maintenance and repairs, fuel, and insurance by the number of miles I have driven it and it came out to something obscene like $1.75 a mile. What a crock. It certainly is more convenient and enjoyable than a car, but I live in a city where I could do without this expense. If I just rode a bicycle everywhere I could probably save myself an average of $400 a month (gas, insurance, bank payment come out to about $270).

My second big expense is food. I eat almost all organic produce and meat from some of the world's finest vendors. I don't really think this would be a wise thing to cut back on, but I should certainly be maximizing the health benefits of this diet.

I've often talked about how eating this way is cheaper than cancer, but I still smoke a few cigarettes a week, eat too much candy, and don't really turn down the white bread as much as I could. I've been going through a "mass gain" diet lately and it's been a free for all. I'm much stronger than I have been in the past, but also a hair flabbier, and I've had insanely bad allergies. The balance of life seems to demand moderation, so I'm going to have to adjust a few things on the food front.

I become more convinced each day that a primal diet is the way to go.

The final expense is the holidays. Or more specific holiday shopping. I fucking hate the holidays. I hate that they always require presents and expenses, financially depleting displays of affection, and loss of work.

I'm probably being a little unfair here, you should want to get your wife nice things, but ALL of the gift buying holidays basically occur between November and February (including my anniversary). I just wish that one year I could just call a truce with everyone and just exchange cards. I actually have spent a good 1/6th of my income or more this year on presents.

It's not that I don't want to buy my family stuff, I just would like a year where I can get my head above water.

Anyway, steps that I can take to solve this ( I am all about action today):

1. Increase the use of the bicycle. I may not be able to stop paying for this 1000cc albatross, but I can reduce wear and tear and gas expense. Also, commuting on a bike is a good way to increase NEPA (non-exercise physical activity).

2. Eliminate snake oil from my diet. I spend a ton of money on consuming weird shit. It is actually more cost effective for me (because of my job) to eat buffalo meat than it is to drink expensive protein powders.

3. Stop eating out. This is twice as costly as home preparation, and also where I get all of my non-paleo foods.

4. Drink nothing but water. Coffee, tea, soda, etc. Less calories, less stimulants, less money

5. I don'y have another holiday for a while. I'll have to figure this one out, though.

Time to get outside and get some vitamin D, sucka.

Vegan Crank Addict

2010-02-12T20:11:00.001-08:00

I'm going to officially come out in support of Vega Sport, the new energy powder/electrolyte replacement/methamphetamine from Vega. I've praised their meal replacement shake in the past on this blog, but this new shit is on a whole different level.

It's like vegetarian cocaine. It might even be too strong.

I drank a scoop full in a protein shake thirty minutes before hitting my last workout of the week in the Starting Strength sequence. I improved in all my lifts and actually set a few PRs.

I did the full 3x5 back squats (after linear warmup) at my new max of 190lbs with what I consider a lot left in the tank. I actually did seven reps on my last set. My previous best 1RM was 205. I think I am probably going to pass that as a 5RM within the month.

The same goes for the overhead press. My old 1 RM was a really kind of sad 110lbs. I did that for 3x5. I finished with some bodybuilderrific cable work and a circuit of 3x10 pullups done on a hangboard "superseted" with max dips

I've become interested in including a few staple body building moves at the end of the workout and that lead me to doing a 4x15 ascending rep of seated cable rows. This is kind of a stupid exercise and I certainly feel doing extra heavy one arm dumbell rows is a more productive use of time as would be a tabata type scheme on a Concept 2 rower.

I do have a kind of soft spot for this exercise, though. It was the very first exercise anyone ever coached me how to do when I went to the gym for the first time at the age of twenty five. I struggled to do a set of ten at 50lbs. At the time I was a heavy smoker and weighed 130 lbs soaking wet.

Today I pulled 120lbs like it was nothing and I weigh 160lbs. In the world of bodybuilding and certainly powerlifting these numbers aren't really that much, but I feel like I am moving forward with a strong base and will be able to confidently wear a shirtless barbarian costume next Halloween.

All in all it was a pretty good day at the gym. Well, except for the ass clown doing some kind of queer circuit all over the place. After wobbling around on his goofy ass Bosu ball for a while he came over and asked if he could work a set in. We let him.

I look forward to the day that the weight I am using is so obscene that the very sight of it would be a deterrent to such douchery.

Time to go drink that milk.

Beasting Up

2010-02-11T19:52:00.000-08:00

Every time I touched a weight for the past three years I was wasting my time. Why? Because I was eating like a fruity ass underwear model. Even during the Rabbit Hole mass building experiment I was barely eating over 2500 calories.

My combination of Vega protein powder, raw milk, nearly raw buffalo steaks, kale, apples, and carrots as fuel for the Starting Strength program has pushed me into a new level of size and strength. I just weighed in at 160lbs (I started at 148 in December). I am right at being able to do 5 rep maxes of weights that were my 1 rep maxes during my Crossfit training.

Best of all my wife told me my neck muscles were looking too big. I don't know of any better sign of success than this.

I haven't even really put on much visible body fat. In five weeks I'll start the AIDS Ride training in full swing, cut out the milk, and ditch the grains. My bicycle racing pal advised me against going paleo, but I think her main concern has more to do with not getting enough carbs. My addiction to dried fruit and almonds is probably enough to not worry about the carb defecit.

Having a very specific goal (finishing the AIDS Ride at a bodyweight of 160lbs) has been extremely useful in maintaining dedication to this eating plan and routine.

The only real bummer is that none of my clothes fit. My already slim fitting Levis are so fucking tight I feel like they are trying to kill me. I'm probably going to have to buy some cheap, temporary pants that are a little looser than I like. Ben Davis or something.

I am stoked.

Post AIDS Ride it's going to be back to the Rabbit Hole or somewhere to focus on a classic bodybuilding routine for a little while, Crossfit somewhere in the Fall, and another round of Starting Strength in the Winter.

Food Inc, Finally

2010-02-10T11:21:00.000-08:00

It took me months to watch Food Inc. I've probably read every single book they mentioned, listened to interviews by all the talking heads, and work for the kind of company that will hopefully turn the tides of the food war.

I finally watched it with my wife (vegan) and our dog (opportunistic carnivore). The dog wasn't interested at all, lifting her ears only when I said the word "meat" when commenting about something I saw. She knows this word, and it is probably her favorite word next to "walk".

My wife, having tortured herself with dozens of PETA videos was also relatively unaffected.

All that said, I think this movie is right on target and would serve as a fantastic entry point for conversation with truly backwards ass family members that just don't get what's wrong with their food.

Joel Salatin, the farmer profiled in Omnivore's Dilemma, has a pretty cool couple of scenes. Why this man hasn't replaced Joe the fake plumber and Sarah the Fucking Retard Palin as the spiritual voice of the Libertarian movement is beyond me.

My old professor Dale Carrico says something to the effect that whenever he meets a Libertarian he can be pretty sure he is talking to someone that is a Republican that wants to smoke pot or suck on a hooker's toes without fear of arrest. While humorous, I think there are a few instances where this is wrong. Specifically food culture.

Carrico is right if you are looking at the vast majority of people who claim they are Libertarians. They pretend to embrace free market capitalism and traditional American values, but what they really want is to buy cheap shit and not be bothered by "spics" and "niggers". These types are rightly sub labeled as Tea-Partiers. They are actually all about corporate militarism, conversion by the sword, and monoculturation of every thing they can get their hands on.

A true Libertarian would by conviction look holistically at all of his or her decisions, especially financial ones. Say your big issue is immigration. You don't want anyone else to come here. You are certainly entitled to your viewpoint. No one is stopping you from being an asshole. But then you go to Costco and buy a bunch of cheap porkchops. You are now officially full of shit. You support one of the industries that brings in masses of cheap labor to keep costs down.

These workers are not bad people. That Christian Fundamentalists attack these people is a true sign of how far the church has fallen. Most of these Mexicans are hard working Christians trying desperately to improve the lives of their families. These hypocritical amateur border guards and grand standing political dick weeds would do exactly the same if the roles were reversed.

But these fat as fuck fake Libertarians continue on to Costco and then make a stop at the gun club to purchase yet another fucking pistol or rifle. Bill Cooper and Kurt Saxon are both pretty well known "gun nuts" and each one of them has said that all you need is a rifle, a pistol, and the training to use both. Most of these 2nd amendment goons are just fetishists, civil war recreators pretending to play war. Hoping for the day Red Dawn happens.

What happens when the war is over Rambo? What are you going to eat when your MREs (bought in bulk!) run out?

1/2GORMAD Updates

2010-02-08T16:16:00.000-08:00

Rippetoe's program famously calls for a gallon of milk a day. I don't think anyone serious at all about long term health, environmental issues, or a host of other dairy related issues should do this. Milk is pretty much fucked once it has been pasteurized.

Sure, I get that you can't safely produce billions of gallons of milk for consumers in a factory model without pasteurizing it. Bovine tuberculosis is fucking gnarly and there are plenty of cases where naturopathic lunacy has caused the death of people with compromised immune systems. If you want raw dairy you're probably safest owning your own cow that you take really good care of.

I'm a studio apartment dweller so that's not really much of an option. I turn to Organic Pastures for my milk. I like that their cows live outside and eat grass.

Years ago when I tried drinking a ton of milk to "get hyoooog" things didn't go so well. My stomache was bloated, I felt like hell, my skin broke out, and I gained about an equal amount of fat as muscle.

I'm a week into consuming huge amounts of raw milk mixed with Vega protein powder. Things are going well. I started a modified power lifting program (Wendler's 5/3/1) about three months ago. I started at a weight of 147. I weighed in today at 155. Eight pounds in twelve weeks is not too bad, considering I am not any fatter.

The last two weeks of Starting Strength have been phenomenal. I'm about two or three weeks from smashing a ton of PRs and I've done it with mostly food and consistent training (Vega is not quite real fo

Bulktastic

2010-02-03T22:40:00.000-08:00

The scale tipped at the not quite all time high of 154.4 lbs. today. I think the heaviest I've been was like 158 or something near it following the original Crossfit Oakland Starting Strength attempt (or as Mike famously called it, Cross-fat).

There were three participants including myself. None of us really benefited at all because we were retards. Crossfit works in its own way and Starting Strength works really well. Combining them is basically counterproductive. To do Starting Strength correctly you need to do no more or less than what is written in the program and drink the stupid gallon of milk a day.

So here I am third day and second work out of Starting Strength. Yes, yes, I know I'm just eight weeks past the Wendler 5/3/1, but hear me out. My legs need to be strong like a donkey's and I need to be about fifteen to twenty pounds heavier for this tortuous AIDS Ride training. SS is just about perfect for this.

Am I on the gallon of milk a day? Not exactly. Regular milk is fucking gross. I drink raw milk from Organic Pastures. About half a gallon mixed with my beloved Vega protein powder. If you do the math the GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) is about 16 cups. That makes 128 grams of protein and 2300 calories. Gnarly. Unfortunately the raw milk is expensive (8 bucks per half gallon). The Vega is expensive too, so my champagne tastes have my gallon of milk mixed with vega (GOMMWV) running about 15 bucks a day. This is cheaper than actual organic food equivalents, but not affordable over the long run.

60 days of this is going to run me around 900 dollars. Frightening when you look at it that way. What am I hoping to buy for this 900? 225 lb. backsquat, 310 lb. deadlift, 175 lb. bench press, 125 lb. OHP and a body weight of 175.

After that the heinously painful long distance bicycle training begins. Fuck me.

Weights, Waits

2010-01-31T21:24:00.000-08:00

February first is a day that I often use as my go to, get started, now I'm serious, time to let the chips fall, sleeve rolling up, D-Day.

Speaking of D-Day, I'm in love with the show Band of Brothers. How I let this one slide for nearly a decade is beyond me.

Anyway.

Tomorrow my plan is to eat as much as I can for eight weeks and lift extremely heavy weights. fat will come with muscle, as it often does for the big eater, but that's okay. It's cold out, and there aren't any shirt off opportunities for a while. Why am I doing this? Sometime in July I'll be doing a bicycle ride from SF to LA (The AIDS Ride). During this time I'll be doing an awful lot of long, slow cardio and probably losing a ton of unwanted weight.

This weight gain is going to be sort of prophylactic. If I can get up to about one eighty before I begin shifting gears to cycle oriented training, I'll be about where I'd like to be. This will probably be relatively uncomfortable, but I imagine post AIDS ride I will end up at about 165. A solid weight for me.

Over the years I've tried a variety of exercise protocols and am not too unhappy with where I'm at. Of course my buddy Chris, the black Hulk, told me I had a hipster body, so I can't be doing that great.

The point about all this is that I think it is useful to have competitive events to shoot for. You know what you need to do, and then you get there as intelligently as possible. The only organized event I ever did was the Camp Pendleton Mud Run. It was a 5k or so race that had a variety of toned down boot camp challenges thrown in to get the participants dirty.

It was a blast and I would have to say that at the end of the race I was in bad ass shape as well felt pretty accomplished. I didn't win or anything, but I was second fastest in my group (dusted by Mike Minium) and managed to get a taste for competition.

Goals like "getting in shape" are retarded. They mean nothing. Even personal goals are pretty suspect. I can't tell you how many times I've told myself "400 lb deadlift in 6 months". When you are accountable to forces outside yourself you have a tendency to cowboy up and go further.

The best fighters don't just train. They train for a fight. Racers train for races.

Death Wish List

2010-01-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

Cyclocross Bicycle (Jamis Supernova)
Mono Black Chrome Bag
Matte Black Bern Helmet
Nau Asylum Jacket
Mac Powerbook
Dragon Door Kettlebell
Vibrams Classics

Too bad there's no Santa Claus.

Clowns to the left.

2010-01-28T22:37:00.000-08:00

If I could start from scratch, career wise, I would choose medicine. Specifically military, combat medicine. Perhaps it's all those Band of Brothers episodes I've been watching lately, but hell. If I had gone into the Navy Reserves at 18, gone to college, stayed enlisted through medical school, and kept going that route, I'd be a debt free surgeon today.

Woulda coulda shoulda.

I've basically got two choices to improve my life, career wise.

The first, stay in the service industry, save money, and open something up. A bar, a restaurant, a cafe, a brothel, something.

The second, go back to professional school. If you think of this whole exercise as a flow chart, then I've got to break the next steps into three most likelies: Law, Arts, Medicine.

law school seems like death. Slow, boring death. Although being involved in the copyright suit that should be being planned right now against the NFL on behalf of all the people of New Orleans that grew up saying Who Dat? would be amazing, going into debt for that bullshit seems terrible. Although, if I were to do it I would go part time to University of San Francisco

The Arts. No way. Going to school for writing, music, painting is for those that wish to waste their parent's money. Working class artists need to tough it out like Bukowski.

Medicine? This is the long shot. I may as well be starting over with this crazy shit. Even becoming a nurse would take a shit load of time. The money's good. The calling is solidly beneficial to human kind. Eh.

I'd give just about anything to turn back time by about ten years.

The last statement is an odd one. I wouldn't trade my experiences, but to dial back my biological age would be bombtastic. What about slowing aging?

I look young for my age. I also believe that you can add years of non-degenerative, disease free years through strict diet and exercise. Wouldn't it be cool to just be like, fuck it, I'm thirty plus, I'll career change, no problem?

I think that life extension therapies are going to be the big deal in the next decade. Fitness trainers, surgeons, and dieticians are probably going to align in a big way and the post "functional" fitness boom will be restorative in nature.

What Kind of Primitive Are You?

2010-01-21T21:59:00.001-08:00

Primal Living is sort of an interesting grab bag of next big thing fitness modalities, corny Locavorism, Environmentalist wet dreams, and societal death wish. Oh, if only we could be more like original man! Yeah, it would be sweet to walk around picking berries, eating fresh killed buffalo liver, and having six pack abs just from running around and fucking stone age hotties.

Fantasy. Reality. Why can't you just ever get along?

Flawed as it is, I am attracted to the entire paleo schtick. I like eating buffalo, berries, and when I was single I certainly had a thing for dred-locked girls with bones through their noses and what not.

These days I mainly sit in front of the TV and wonder what the hell happened.

But slowly, this is all changing and it has a lot to do with a trick of perception. What would idealized neo-cave Chad do? What does that even mean?

Take my wife's veganism as an example. She got very bummed out by some cattle mutilation videos I showed her and now she's a born again vegan animal rights supporting hard ass. She has an unusually strong will and has embraced her new lifestyle essentially compromise free. She is vegan. She does not deviate.

I want the same thing for myself, but oriented towards Primalism. Grass fed meats. Organic wild fruits. Tons of free time. Intense physical efforts resulting in lean muscle. Fantasy? Reality?

The precedent has been set for veganism. A hundred or more years of liberal anti-meat propaganda (I'm looking at you Tolstoy and Ghandi) and dedication from True Believers has created a world in which it is possible to live free of animal products. Is this a realistic ideal for the person that seeks to eliminate the negative aspects of modernity and post modernity from their diets? Can you function Primally (I like the term Primal instead of Paleo) on the same level as you can vegetarian socially?

You might be tempted to say yes, but I've found it to be much easier to exist as a Vegetarian than a Primal Eater. People get it. You say you don't eat meat and people might think it's weird, but they have some understanding.

Paleo is much harder. You only eat certain kinds of meats? No problem. Jews and Muslims had specific meat regulations in place for thousands of years. No one is going to bust a Hasid's balls if he turns down your Gentile hot dog. But if you turn up your nose to some kind of meat that seems just fine and you don't have a religious or ethical reason that people can get really quickly you look like a weirdo.

So here we go. Would the marriage of some sort of atavistic moral code to the Primal lifestyle benefit those that wish to live this way? I'm actually talking about the invention and codifying of a set of mores and morals for the neo-primative. More to come

Rest Week, Rest Weak

2010-01-18T17:13:00.000-08:00

According to the now nearly completely derailed Wendler 5/3/1 program, this is my de-load week. I'm supposed to be hitting the weights, but at 40%. I strayed a little today and went for a max weighted pullups attempt as well as a max deadlift (1rm for each).

I pulled 280 lbs. off the floor easy, then failed at 300 lbs. I was also able to do one pull-up with 65 lbs. hanging from my feet. This is down from my best by about 45 lbs. on the deadlift and about 20 lbs. on the weighted pullup.

In general, I would say that my training has been rolling around at about 70% of my capability. I don't do much in the way of metcon and all my flexibility talk has come crashing to a halt.

I'm about eight weeks in to this Wendler 5/3/1 business, and I'm not sure what to think about it. I have maintained a reasonable level of strength, but haven't pushed into difficult territory. I started very, very light, so that's part of it and after this week I'll be hitting the numbers I used to begin my aborted Starting Strength effort. I think I may also add a weighted pullup day, probably Thursday.

Notes: Heavier weights and more protein. More sprinting, preferably with the Vibrams soon. Increased bouldering skill sessions, focusing on slopers and balance. Yoga.

Na'vi-Fit

2010-01-12T23:36:00.000-08:00

I'll just come out now and say that I thought Avatar was fantastic and all the whiny dip-cones that bitched about how stupid or predictable the story-line was need to suck a big one. Whenever you get to see mil-corp greed smashed by autonomous bands of pre-industrial savages you need to stand up and cheer.

Sure, the story is basically Dances With Wolves in space. I left the theater thinking that Avatar had more in common with Inglorious Basterds than anything else. Though set in the future, it's essentially a fantasy revision of the actual dark history of the New World. As Tarantino lets a bunch of killer Jews annihilate Hitler, Cameron destroys the Military Industrial Complex with giant blues Ewoks. Just more Hollywood liberalism I guess, but cool as hell and as far as this Anarchist is concerned, long overdue.

This film is about as close as we're likely to get to an alt-history vision where Guns, Germs, and Steel had little effect. However, I can imagine a sequel that takes place a few years after the natives find the firewater that the soldiers left behind. Or even worse, one clan figures out that the guns are going to be pretty useful for killing other clans and that they may as well mine and refine the Unobtanium themselves. Of course, that's just me being cynical.

At least the hostile environment seems to not allow the Earth germs to run rampant on Pandora. On that note, what happens to the humans that stayed behind when their oxygen supply for their masks become depleted? Short sited, bro.

Surprisingly, the fitness world has had little to say about Avatar. This is probably due to the fact that no one had to do extreme P90X/Crossfit/Gym Jones/Death Training to get abs that are "the cut". The gears in my head were spinning, though.

The Paleo crowd should love this film. The Na'vi eat fruit and wild game, reject modernity, and are able to parkour their way through a hostile jungle using only their carbon fiber laced bodies and bows and arrows . The whole thing is like an advertisement for Erwan Le Corre's MovNat.

You probably couldn't do much better fitness wise than adopting a regimen of primal/natural movements and paleo/raw food eating. Just being outdoors seems like it's good for folks. I've greatly reduced the time I spend lifting weights and have been spending more time climbing, sprinting, and walking around the city. Just getting out, mixing it up.

Right now I'm six weeks into my Wendler 5/3/1+ bouldering plan, eating mostly plant foods. Avatar sort of revived my interest in Parkour and trail running. After my program is over I think I may spend a few weeks doing some fast paced hiking and what not.

I also liked the simplicity of The Na'vi lifestyle. You get a bow, a few arrows, a knife, and a loin cloth. When you're tired get your ass in the big tree and pass out. We could all stand to adopt a little more of this "do more with less" attitude.

Lately I've been pretty good at reducing the amount of crap I own. Frequently I think about the legend that Genghis Khan owned only a single coat and claimed that to own more would be decadent. Could you imagine? Conquering the world and being like, it's cool, I'll rock this old goat skin. Awesome.

I used to really be into the idea of renunciation and harbored an ascetic fantasy where I would live in a cave and become dead to the world. These days I realize it's more about being efficient and having, as Ghandi recommended, no more than what you need on hand.

There's also this old Buddhist Monk thing where you're only allowed to have five possessions. I always dug that too. I'm pretty sure a few changes of modest clothing are allowable without counting towards this total. If I had to pick only five things they would probably be:

1. My 1963 Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar (I barely play it, but it's also the only family heirloom I have worth anything)

2. My Vitamix Blender

3. My Laptop (though my six year old Mac might need replacing soon)

4. A Leatherman knife tool

5. Either a bicycle or a Vespa, I can't decide.

Enough babbling. My workout today was simple. I picked a really steep two block long stretch of road and ran up it as fast as possible 10 times. When I reached the bottom, I did as many pullups as I could on a don't walk sign. I felt weak after I finished, but this is a major improvement over last week when I ran up a less steep hill and nearly puked after five sprints.

I think everyone should see Avatar and do hill sprints.

Squat, Climb, Kill!

2010-01-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

Monday is squat day and despite being slowed by some cycling monkey doing curls in the squat rack (an unbelieveably common, yet sort of hysterical occurance; I used to think all the bitching about this done on forums was urban legend, but lo, it is true) I was able to get a pretty good work out in.

My all time best, teeth clenched, about to pass out one rep max for the squat was 225#. Now I know this isn't setting any records, but considering my weight averages about 150# it's not too terrible. For the last few weeks I've been ramping back up and feel like that weight is within reach again. I may even pass it.

The workout:

Quick bicycle ride to gym (one of the many reasons I like Mission Cliffs)
General warm-up including foam rolling, air squats, Hindu push-ups, etc. (enough to get warm)

Squat- 100x10, 140x3, 160x3, 170x3, 190x3 (max reps attempted)

After cooling down I bouldered for about an hour and a half. I managed to get a V3 that had been impossible two days before.

In general, this big lift followed by climbing schedule seems to be agreeing with me. If anything I may need to do more stabilizing muscle work (overhead squats, Turkish get-ups, ab wheel) and certainly more metabolic conditioning, though the increase in bicycle riding and use of sprint days is encouragingly effective so far).

The next time Fight Gone Bad or CIndy comes up as a WOD, I'm going to try and head to Oakland and rock it out. I estimate my FGB score to probably be around 250 and my Cindy to be 12 rounds. Who knows though?

Prathertarianism

2010-01-11T10:32:00.000-08:00

So my wife has entered the world of blogging. Her website is dedicated to Vegan cooking. It's called Cookies With Christel.

She adopted the Vegan lifestyle after a 30 day challenge presented by PETA. Now let's be clear. I work for a meat company, don't claim to be vegetarian, and have watched and enjoyed Penn & Teller's awesome take down of PETA. I think a lot of the membership have dangerous True Believer tendencies. That said, I also think the organization is awesome in a way that few are these days. Their advertising campaigns are about as compromise free as it gets and the fact that shitty factory farms will often at least pretend to adopt healthier systems out of fear of attention is certainly something to admire.

The first thing I always tell people about her veganism is that prior to going veg she was experiencing a hereditary arthritis pain in her joints. It's something that runs in her family and struck at a really early age. It also isn't helped by the fact that she is a marathon runner.

A few weeks into veganism the pain disappeared. Her knuckles had been very swollen, so swollen that her wedding ring was difficult to remove (lucky for me I guess). We had actually gotten it re sized to compensate for the swelling recently and now it actually fits loose.

The second thing I always tell people is that the variety and quality of our meals have increased dramatically. She is an excellent cook and other than animal sourced protein (which I think is very effective for muscle building and extremely convenient especially considering my job) our diet is probably filled with a wider variety of nutrients than it ever has been.

Since November or so I have been mostly Vegan. What this means practically is that my meals I eat with her (about once a day due to our schedules) are totally vegan. I have also switched all of my workout specific nutrition (pre and post workout shakes, etc.) to vegan sources. I rely heavily on a product called Vega. Much is being written about alkalizing proteins these days and their effectiveness in preventing muscle soreness and illness. I can only report anecdotes, but I usually get a terrible case of pneumonia every Fall/Winter no matter what. This year I haven't even experienced a slight cough. I have also been working out at a consistently demanding level (weightlifting/sprints/climbing) and have what can only be described as minimal muscle soreness.

If and when I do eat meat these days it is only from the company I work for. This meat source is appropriately husbanded and fits well within the requirements of Paleo-Diet parameters. I am completely against consuming meat from factory farms and am trying to avoid it. This has lead to what I would call a "Prathertarian" diet. All Vegan except where sourced from Prather Ranch Meat Co.

My diet is much higher in carbohydrates than I thought would be optimum, but despite this I have leaned out visibly. In fact, the only time I have been leaner/ more muscular was while following a three week paleo plan and Crossfitting heavily at Crossfit Oakland (I would describe this period as the time I was "most fit", but I was also constantly injured and exhausted).

I am sure that were I to do any number of VO2 max testing Crossfit workouts I would probably be sucking wind, however, I don't think my number would be much lower than my maxes. Same goes for pure strength. I was able to lift the biggest numbers while working out at The Rabbit Hole, but I am currently not far behind those PRs.

I don't know that this diet/workout plan is for everybody or even optimal for certain goals, but for me, right now it's doing fine.

Yesterday's Workout: Performed at Planet Granite SF

Warmup/mobility drills
Row 3K at moderate pace (13m:22s)
Overhead Press- 65#x10, 75#x5, 85#x3, 95#x6
(In between each set of overhead presses I did 10 pullups and 10 dips for a total of 40 each)
Power Clean- 85#x10, 95#x10, 105#x10
(in between each set I did 10 wide grip ring pushups)

GHD situps and back raises with 8# medicine ball behind neck 10x5 each side

Stretching and Foam Rolling.

Notes: prior to this workout I drank the shake known as the Yerba Matte Massacre. It was very hard on my stomach but worked like a charm. It was too strong to use every day, but on Sundays, it will probably be useful to motivate my ass to get to the gym.

Liquid Awesome

2010-01-10T15:12:00.001-08:00

Since receiving my Vitamix blender for Christmas I have been experimenting with a variety of fitness enhancing concoctions. The latest one may have gone too far. I call it the Yerba Matte Massacre:

Handful of Kale
Complete packet of Yerba Matte Tea
Teaspoon of raw coconut oil
Two scoops Vega protein supplement
Filtered water

It tastes like herbs and dirt, but it is like some kind of chlorophyl laden methamphetamine. I was ready for a nap, now it is time to go overhead press like a mad man. This drink isn't exactly easy on the stomache, but I'm pretty sure I'm about to go set some PRs at the gym.

Training Day

2010-01-04T22:55:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of training someone. I introduced my general warm up and the basics of the squat.

My general warm up consists of the following:

1. Full body joint mobility (arm rotations, twists, ankle rotations)

2. Track & Field style dynamic stretches (leg swings)

3. 3-5 rounds of 5 kipping pullups, 10 hindu pushups, and 15 toe touch squats

4. 5-10 minutes of jumping rope or rowing

5. Lift specific warm up.

I kept the squats light for my subject and checked his form while he squatted with just the bar.

I did my normal Wendler 5/3/1 squats. Instruction took time so I skipped the assistance exercises and bouldered instead. I was strong on a v3, but was shut down on a v2 that required a lot of reach or a slight dyno (at least as far as I could tell).

New Lifting Crew

2010-01-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

Today marks my first day of training another person. I'm hesitant because I've actually come to enjoy lifting alone. It's very meditative and once you get beyond the fear of dropping some shit on your head, you're okay. Until, of course, you drop shit on your head.

I'm not really up to dangerous to lift solo weights just yet, so maybe my mind will change. Doing an extremely slow progression like I am following will probably extend that time for a bit.

It's going to be difficult to train someone with a less than ideal set of dietary practices. I think my starting advice would be:

1. Don't smoke
2. Reduce/eliminate liquid sugar
3. Eat a good breakfast
4. cut white flour consumption in half

I had a cool idea for a workout business. It would be mobile, based out of a biodiesel station wagon and include enough gear for two or three people to work out with.

Monastic Lifting

2010-01-03T00:38:00.000-08:00

The alarm went off at 7:30am today and I managed to not hit snooze, put pants on, and hit the gym. Gyms are the best early in the morning. Only the super motivated are there. Serious people lifting serious weights. I used to lift at World Gym and all the real deal muscle heads were there early. No lines. No kids fucking around on equipment. No retards checking their Mens Fitness over and over again to see what their watered down circuit is supposed to be.

My "new" program is so stripped down that it could be followed by a child, but it works. I have run and lifted to the point of nausea several times in the last few weeks. The only other time I've done that is in Crossfit.

I used to never be a self motivated lifter. I needed a partner or a class to really push myself. Now I've got a little notebook. I can't hide from the numbers, can't bullshit them. So far I'm going lighter than I used to during my Oakland days, but the edge is coming. In a few weeks I'll be right up against all of my PRs and then the real tests will begin.

I'm not a big dude and I haven't been consistent as I'd like to have been so my lifts aren't that impressive. Neither is my physique. I think training ADD is to blame. The Wendler 5/3/1 is curing all that.

Warm up, big lift, two supplemental lifts, proper stretching, foam roller. The day after, run big hills until sick. Simple.

Gym Biography.

2009-12-28T10:18:00.000-08:00

In my mid twenties I decided that I wanted to get in better shape. I went to a Jiu-Jitsu class with a work friend and was frustratingly crushed into the mat over and over again. It wasn't just lack of skill, it was weakness. I weighed 130 lbs. and did nothing more strenuous than have frequent sex with girls I met at bars. Don't get me wrong, this is a worthy enterprise and it says something about physical adaptation and sexual selection, but I just wasn't in good shape.

I turned to the internet and ordered, god knows why, three books from a Russian fitness coach named Pavel. The first was called The Naked Warrior and advocated getting in shape basically by a program made up of one legged squats and one armed pushups. I couldn't do either at first, but that was the point. A month later I could actually do both.

The second book I ordered from Pavel, Power to the People, was similarly Spartan. Do deadlifts. Do a ton of deadlifts.

The third book was called Relax In To Stretch. It was all about stretching. I paid the least amount of attention to this (I will get in to why this book may have been the one to study the most).

Pavel books are simple to read and well illustrated. They contain no bullshit exercises. The problem with them is that they are more than half filled with advertisements for Pavel's other fitness books and products: kettlebells, nutrition, barbells, etc.

People on Amazon reviews hate on this, but I think it's not so bad. Say you've mastered the one arm pushup and one legged squat, you're as flexible as you can be in eight weeks, and you know how to and regularly perform the deadlift. Now what? Kettlebells? What are those? Why the fuck not?

I think a person could maintain great shape by ordering a Pavel book, sticking to that single minded program and adding another book on top of that program when you plateaued with it (this is different than being bored with it). Pavel would probably claim this was by design, but I would take that with a grain of salt.

Armed with these excellent guides to fitness I did what any proud American would do. I listened to my friends and joined a big box gym. World Gym. For the next 18 months I did the kind of work out that has been getting people little to no results for decades. A bodyuilder split routine where the only nutrition advice was "eat as much as you can, bro". To this gym's credit it is all about business. People come here to lift weights and get big. There were some true roid monsters in this place and if that's your thing, cool.

My buddy who trained me is one of those mutants that does everything at high intensity and he was actually in good shape for doing such a corny trickle down from the seventies bodybuilding program. His Jiu-Jitsu practice probably had much more to do with his fitness, though. And actually, considering how rigorous and dedicated he was to his practice (he rolled even with a torn bicep and his arm in a sling) a "relaxed" single bodypart work out was probably good for him.

Not so for me. I just got marginally stronger and visibly fatter. Withou the high intensity workout from a martial arts I was just edging towards skinny/fat/strong.

After my bodybuilding escapades I joined a Muay Thai gym and actually got in pretty good shape. I wanted to learn how to fight more than I wanted to look good, but learning the one makes the other happen. At a martial arts gym, especially one where you can actually compete at an amateur level (Judo, Muay Thai, Boxing) the skillful are quickly seperated from the skilless. If you are like me, just average, you will find yourself stagnating unless you make it known you want to fight. I never did, so I ended up basically cardio kick boxing for two years. Not so bad, really.

The main gym I worked out at was Fairtex (I've also been to a few other Jiu Jitsu places), and besides being extremely expensive and very dirty (standing water in the mens bathroom at all time, pads smelled like dead kittens) it was a good place to train. I liked the people there and even if I didn't get the best attention from the trainers I did get a lot of help from other, more advanced students.

World Gym got me off the couch, Fairtex got me active.

During my kickboxing I decided I needed to get stronger ( I had stopped lifting weights) and somehow I happened upon the Gym Jones site. I think I was searching for kettlbell routines because Fairtex had a full set that no one ever used. This changed everything. Gym Jones lead me to Crossfit (which is kind of ironic considering the animosity between the two).

I started training at the San Francisco Crossfit. At the time they only had two classes. A 6am and a 7pm. Both were hard to make with my night school and bartending schedule, but I dragged my carcass in there for two months three times a week.

Crossfit worked like nothing had ever before. The main difference was in the emphasis on correct form and nutrition. The head coaches at CFSF were excellent, intelligent, and dedicated. I was told exactly why I was doing each exercise and what I was to eat when I went home.

Once I discovered Crossfit Oakland and their far more civilized noon classes, I made the trek across the bridge and got truly fit for the firdt time in my life.

Now there are plenty of negatives for Crossfit that are valid. The organization itself (and I'm talking the main site folks) is lame. It's right wing and ultra-capitalist, against other sports (this is exemplified by Dave Castro's rants against endurance athletes), and fails to address evolution in manners that are not easily conducive to dollars (the Robb Wolf story fits here).

I sustained my fair share of injuries doing as Rx'd WODs and many others who faired much worse than myself are considered unfit pussies by the main site folks. To them, Crossfit is the bomb and anyone that is having a hard time with it, well, it's all their fault.

Crossfit Oakland itself is golden. The trainers and community are about all you could hope for in a gym. The place is clean, people rack their weights, individual needs are addressed, intelligent experimentation is encouraged, and it isn't even that expensive. My only problem with it is that it's in Oakland, which adds about $100 a month in bridge and gas expense and an hour commute time every time I work out.

For the last year I've been rock climbing at Planet Granite. To be more accurate, I work out at Planet Granite and occasionally climb. Their gym is basically a kick ass Crossfit facility and the walls are top notch. The gym is beautiful, the climbing is great, and the rates are affordable.

The biggest negative is this place is in the fucking Marina. That means that most of the people who go there are clowns.

Here is a list of douche behavior I have observed at Planet Granite in the last two weeks:

1. Parents letting toddlers play in the weight room, a space clearly marked as for only adults
2. After tying into ropes on a route a parent comes up and asks myself and my partner to wait so his kid can climb a route that interesects ours. "He's been waiting all day!" The douche parent excalims.
3. A douche bag clips his nails in the locker room letting all the nail ends fall on the bench and carpet. He makes no effort to clean them up.
4. A retard throws a medicine ball at a wall with a fragile pipe on it in the stretching/pilates area.
5. Some old fuck pours eucalyptus oil all over the stones in the sauna

It goes on and on. Is it worth it? Well, I climb about twice a month with my friend Jerry at the PG in Belmont, that's always fun, but I really only climb about once a week these days, if that. I've gotten way more into weights and stretching (with occasonal Yoga).

Crossfit Oakland, were it close to my house would be where I would prefer to train. It has everything I need. Which is the following:

1. Olympic weights
2. Dumbells up to 80 lbs.
3. GHD sit up chair
4. Concept Rower
5. Pullup bars
6. Kettlebells
7. A clientele of non-retards
8. Being able to go at a variety of times that fits with my random schedule

What am I going to do next? I don't now. The program I have built myself is working very well. It's basically the Wendler 5/3/1 with some sprinting. Very basic. I've kept a very clean diet and my strength, flexibility, and body composition are improving steadily without injury. You can't ask fo rmuch more than that.

I think I will just have to become the asshole at the gym that yells at everyone.

Namaste, bitches.

House Cleaning Disease

2009-11-15T22:19:00.000-08:00

Some people are hoarders. I'm not one of them. If anything, I am the exact opposite of these weirdos. I look around at the stuff I have and despise any hold it has on me. The Cyberpunk ideal of sleeping in rented coffin rooms and storing everything online, carrying nothing but some cash and a weapon, has a strong appeal.

Of course there is reality. You become like Steve Martin in the Jerk. All you need is the lamp. And the toothbrush. And the laptop (always the laptop). And all the tools of your hobby, whatever it may be. Soon you are standing in a dirty bathrobe clutching a bunch of junk.

I am relatively unencumbered for an American. I own a guitar, a motorcycle, some clothes, some records, and some books. Sure there is the kipple (what Philip K. Dick called random junk possessions) like contact cases and measuring cups and coffee makers, but that stuff is always going to be there. The less the better though.

In an effort to reduce the clutter of my life I have committed to getting rid of to things for every one that I buy. Today I bought a beanie for work and two books I've read are out the door. Actually, far more than two books. I'm clearing out my library again. I always sort of regret doing it later, but I've always figured since I don't own any really valuable editions of anything I can always just replace them when I get a house. I'm out of shelf space now and its all got to go. Choosing what to toss is difficult.

The first thing to go was anything and everything that had to do with the LSAT. That shit is the past and the stacks of prep books I bought are in the trash. Next to go was any sort of pop nutrition book. I have a dozen books each with some radical plan contradicting the book next to it, all promising to deliver health and wellness. You know what? Its all bullshit. Eat less, mostly plants, not so much sugar, and not just out of boredom. I just saved you hours of reading and dollars you could be spending on some other shit.

Anything I've already read had to go to. There are too many books for my short life to go over anything again. I know people think that you have to re-read things over and over to really understand them (and I agree), but I don't have much more time on this flying dirt clod. If I really have to go over it again I'll head to the library.

I just want to get down to a backpack and a motorbike again. To be free like that would be a dream.

Morning Often Soon

2009-11-14T12:17:00.001-08:00

This morning I awoke far more jovial than was to be expected following a brutal sixteen hour work night and treated myself to a morning at the cafe. Christel is out with her friends and I am free to dither about with a stack of books and my aging laptop.

The book I am currently reading is Jack London's John Barlycorn; a book about alcohol and bars and men and San Francisco and addiction. It's a good book for a sober bartender living in the 415 to read. The first quarter is a sort of Rousseau inspired confession about how the narrator learned to drink and love saloons. My favorite thing about London is how a hundred years later his descriptions of the low life living so familiar to me have so little changed. It's reassuring that men living small lives have crashed upon the same rocks I find myself so perilously sailing towards for generations.

I like cafes much more than bars (as I like coffee much more than booze) and the morning spent at an outside table is almost never poorly spent for a writer if he keeps his eyes and ears open, if only peripherally.

There is a young girl that works at my favorite cafe that is not conventionally attractive by any means, but she has a certain style that used to be called 'alternative' and is now commonly associated with alt-porn like Suicide Girls. When I was first out there in the world trying to get my swerve on she would have been a girl I thought I could've gotten.

An okay looker like this can dramatically increase her sex appeal with a few props tattoos, funky glasses, odd t-shirts, premium yet obscure brands of denim. Even guys can go this route and I mostly did. For a while my low style managed a good run with the ladies. The problem is that as you age, your torn up clothing an busted motorcycle boot regalia just ends up looking beat and you end up looking haggard. Every year that passes I look less the handsome rebel and more the loser barkeep that did nothing except mess with junk and try to make it run.

It's even worse for girls. At least Bukowski put the myth of the dirty old codger fucking young snatch down in printed mythology for the rest of us geezers to aspire to. An old rocker girl is suited for nothing more than breeding questionably papered miniature dogs and pouring pitchers of lite beer to out of work roofers.

Back to my morning. My cafe girl sat outside smoking with a guy that was so loud he couldn't help but force me to overhear his fantastic description of his night of work (which he wrote down on napkins. This is the mark of a true writer, if you are so compelled to write that you use anything at hand).

The guy works at some sort of live sex show in the city as a camera operator. He described himself as being a porno cameraman, but there was also talk of an audience throwing dollar bills at the performers. He was so casual about the description of a unicorn horn dildo being used in an ass to mouth to vagina scene, that it was almost easy to ignore the family with two small children sitting next to him. The man read a story about his night of work, and it was really good. Inspiring even. I should have gotten his name because one day his stories will probably be a well regarded book read by at least the likes of me.

Bugs in Your Hair, Wind in Your Teeth

2009-11-11T12:55:00.000-08:00

My last two days off were finally filled with a little bit of adventure. I took the 1 all the way to Santa Maria on my motorcycle. This ride has a lot to offer as you take in a ton of coastal views and pass through Santa Cruz, Big Sur, and Pismo Beach. This little jaunt (a modest 520 miles round trip) wasn't my longest or fastest ride, but it was one of my most head clearing.

See, for the past few months I've spent my days off laying around looking at motorcycle websites and watching motorcycle television shows. This is every bit as sad as spending your days jerking off instead of going out to meet women.

I've got a bit of Harley fever and I've been obsessively looking at all this stuff about dudes that grow beards, build period correct outlaw Panheads, and sleep in shitty lean-to set ups made out of their bike and a tarp. It's all very romantic, even if it does have the same smell of dorkiness I associate with Civil War re-enacting. It must be noted that being able to build and maintain a bike old enough to have been sold to your grandpa new is worth quite a few cool points. If the thing goes on trips of more than 500 miles at a time, then it borders on the badass.

Here are two excellent sites that pretty much cover everything you'd need to be a moto-voyeur:

4qconditioning.blogspot.com

kemosabeandthelodge.blogspot.com

My buddy Josh Snow, a long time scooter bad ass and new pub owner as well as best man at my wedding, put me up for the night in Santa Maria and did his best not to clown my interest in choppers.

The two people I've found that have zero interest in Harleys are brutish dudes that grew up around meth smoking chopper builders and European motorcycle enthusiasts. The former are just reminded of bad times and bad people and want nothing to do with glorifying a bunch of ne'er do-wells that probably beat and molested them as kids. The latter group are unable to forget the history of motorcycling technology and the fact that Harleys have never really been the best or fastest bikes out there.

In addition to loving scooters, Josh is a fanatic for vintage cafe racers and whenever my talk goes chopper his goes racer. I've never owned a chopper, but I have owned a few cafe-ish bikes, including my current 2006 Speed Triple (which as a factory streetfighter is a sort of modern cafe bike; made in England, built for speed and not much else).

As a bike builder, Josh is always on Craigslist and has seen the fickleness of the weekend warrior biker. While I was fantasizing about choppers, Josh was watching the trend of all the jokers with big huge tires trading in their monster rims for skinny rims in an effort to get all "old school". While I was day-dreaming every goofball with a flipped up hat and plaid shirt had already caused my new interest to jump the shark.

For me, the grass is always greener on the other bike, I guess. However, as the temperature dropped and I passed through Santa Cruz in the dark, my thoughts weren't on rigid hard tails and z-bars. They turned to heated grips, adjustable suspension, and well designed fairing. I began to think about what it was about motorcycles that I really loved and in that moment I realized that it was the riding. Specifically long distance riding.

More than anything else I like planning the trip, packing extremely minimal gear, and just peeling off miles. The cost of indulging in a chopper build would probably be enough to pay for two or three cross country trips on my Triumph.

I'll probably keep on looking at those websites, but I'll be jamming on my own bike in my own way. At least this way I won't have to grow a beard.

The Lottery and Racist Bartenders

2009-11-09T10:57:00.000-08:00

I've always loved that exercise where you name the things you would do if you won the lottery and then divine your life's ambitions by pursuing a path to whatever that may be.

Office Space, a truly great American film, offers the two most extreme critiques of this exercise. One character declares it to be bullshit because if it was true, no one would be janitors. Another character, one I consider wiser, simply states he would do two chicks at the same time.

What would I do? You mean other than two chicks? I would get a PHD in Rhetoric with an emphasis in New Media studies and learn how to build motorcycles from the frame up on the weekends. I'd also probably get into bodybuilding, just for giggles.

None of the above is terribly impossible from where I'm standing right now. The only thing in the way is money. And by money I mean enough cash to make my wife not want to kill me. I better start buying lotto tickets now.

A side note:

In the past I have ranted about the two step Guinness pour and how it is functionally uneccesary, but valid because of tradition. Something I have noticed is that the only people who give you the sad puppy dog eyes when you just pour it into the glass without the magic show are white people.

Blacks and Latinos almost always look at you like you are retarded when their beer is sitting, half poured. 99% of the time my African and Latin brothers will say something like "Hey bro, did you forget my beer?" To which I reply, "no there's just this thing about pouring it halfway and waiting two minutes and pouring it again." Almost always I am met with an incredulous stare.

This means one of two things (possibly both). The double pour is so obviously stupid that anyone not "cultured" in the tradition sees it for what it is, a waste of time, or, bartenders across the country think that minorities wouldn't know about the double pour and are purposely shorting them on the tradition.

Listen up cracker bartenders. It's a time for equality. Either give up this stupid tradition or share it with everyone.

New Stuff

2009-10-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

The front page news has become very real for me the last few days. My bank has raised interest rates on my credit card. My insurance denied a valid claim. I am fighting the latter. There seems to be nothing that can be done about the former.

Last night when I got home from my new (and third) job, I watched a show on MTV about people who can no longer afford their lifestyle. I was expecting it to be about working class people caught in the middle of bad breaks. Nope. It was about three total doozers that worked for banks and lending firms. These clowns had been riding high in the horse for a long time, flying around in private jets, ordering bottle service, taking trips to Vegas every weekend. Around the time the "bubble burst" all these clowns had been let go from their positions and were having trouble finding work, which is laughable to me.

One of these douches that lived in San Francisco was actually filmed going out sailing with his friends. He was talking about how far behind his friends he was now. To comfort/ mock him the friends gave him a 40 oz. He could no longer comfortably sail. Give me a break.

I remember these kind of dudes coming into the bar when they had money. I overheard all these conversations about how easy the money was, listened to them dish out advice to working class people about how they could buy a home while putting nothing down and lying about income. I saw these people lay the groundwork for destruction. Now they are crying about it on a reality show.

But honestly, my populist rage is a bit misplaced here. As much as I like seeing a square toe loafer, dress shirt untucked, hair gel dip cone get his, these clowns aren't really to blame. They just took advantage of a situation created by the Capitalist rulers of the world. They were like financial SS troopers at our own economic Death Camp. Just following orders.

I guess the lesson here is that if you make money without actually making something (this includes nearly all commission efforts) you are probably part of the overall problem. What do I know, I'm just a bartender. maybe I'll feel different after Law School.

Oh, Come On, You've Got To Haggle!

2009-10-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

In my three day television binge, brought on by a mildly irritating foot injury and a span of days off following a stiff work week, I was able to watch nearly all of the best Monty Python Movies. They are still hilarious after all these years. Mainly because they are so absurd.

If you watch some classic comedies like Animal House, I feel like they just aren't as funny. This statement probably is going to be seen as blasphemy by some, but in a post Kevin Smith/Frat Pack/Judd Apatow world the bar has been raised so high on crudeness that a seventies fart joke just can't really compete with jizz in the hair (Something About Mary) or a little kid drawing penises (Superbad).

The dick and fart joke comedy has been around for thousands of years. The early comedies of Aristophenes are filled with them, as are many of his contemporaries. Shakespeare is a dabbler as well. I always thought Jack Black at his most corpulant would make a pretty good Falstaff.

Monty Python's comedy will only cease to be relevant when the serious and proper old world it originally parodied has finally been wiped out. When wool suits and bowler hats are finally replaced country wide by sportswear and Ed Hardy shirts, the Monty Python Cycle will be complete. Then perhaps a new comedy troupe will clown the relaxed pants and gold chain wearing masses by introducing a seriousness tinged comedy agenda. I think my favorite Dystopian film, Idiocracy (which is revelatory and prophetic), heads in this direction.

Will we abandon vulgar humor? Certainly not. There isn't much funnier than cocks and flatulance. I think you could crack wind at an innapropriate time in the middle of an undiscovered tribe in the jungle and get laughs.

This morning I saw something that wasn't so funny. My old nemesis Bank of America has announced plans to change some of its terms. In addition to raising APRs, they are now going to start charging for inactivity as well as activity. Basically, for the privelidge of having the card you can be charged between 30 and 100 dollars a year.

My wife and I have been consistently poorly served by this bank. Their ATM machines have eaten cash, destroyed checks, malfunctioned and made funds unavailable. Then when overdratfs happen because of their errors, they have the audacity to charge fees.

The last time this happened I deposited a check in the ATM. My available cash was enough to pay some bills I had, so I went online and paid them. No big deal. After I paid the bills, the bank froze the assets from the ATM. I was then overdrawn. I called to ask what had happened and they suggested that my paycheck may have bounced. This has happened to me many times over the years, so I called my employer and they confirmed they had momey in the account and the check was good.

I called back Skank of America (Bill Maher's term) and asked them what the problem was. They told me literally the following: "Your assets are unavailable because there is a hold on your account". I asked "why is there a hold?" The woman on the line answered "because there is a hold on your account, your assets are unavailable. It will be 11 business days until they are available".

At this point I start asking for higher ups until I talk to a woman that tells me that the ATM had actually malfuntioned, and that the hold was so they could fix the problem. So basically the bank's equipment fucked up and I was unable to use my money. And because of the bank fucking up I was charged overdraft fees. Eventually it was all sorted, but it took over an hour on the phone and I had to abuse people on the phone to get anywhere.

My wife went through a similar situation when dealing with a loan on her Oregon property. The bank teller fucked up, and it almost destroyed the ESCRO process.

What is most disturbing isn't the errors of people and machines. These things happen. It's the willingness of the bank to without question charge the customer for their own mistakes. It's like if I knocked a drink over at the bar and then charged my customer for it and refused to take it off their bill until they yelled at me.

What's with the fucking haggling? It's like the scene in Life of Brian where the beard salesman won't sell Brian the beard until he has haggled. I wonder how much ill gotten gains the bank colelcts from people who are not obsevant of their finances or not assertive enough to scream their way to refunds?

It's so fucking out of control that the cable news financial advisors recommend haggling as a viable credit card strategy. Really? This is the 21st century. Not a Roman bazaar.

Booze: A People's History

2009-10-20T12:45:00.001-07:00

After I finished reading Shop Class as Soul Craft, a Philosophically inclined manifesto of sorts for the manual trades (specifically motorcycle building) I began to lament what I perceived to be a rather limited set of skills in my possession. I never advanced as a mechanic.

Despite owning a relatively extensive stable of vintage bikes over the years, I just am not competent in rebuilding machines. I've been fortunate enough to have good friends who are. As I am a rain or shine, 52 weeks a year, no distance too far type of guy, most of these fellows never scorned my lack of ability. My bikes have always been used and abused, never packed away in a garage, wiped with diapers, seeing the light of day only on pristine conditioned weekends. For all my relative ignorance of the nuts and bolts, it's fair to say I am a real motorcyclist. I like riding more than most other activities and do so almost every single day.

Most of the men I know that are good mechanics shared one or both of the following experiences: a father that passed on mechanic's knowledge or a space that allowed experimentation. My dad, to my knowledge, never worked on cars, and I have never had a garage of my own where I could make mistakes.

What I did have was a Bartender for a father and an unlimited amount of free time to read and write on whatever subjects I chose for myself. The former granted me not so much a knowledge of drink recipes and other trade practices (though those came, too) as it gave me a sort of indoctrination into the world of night work and gray areas of morality. It is impossible for parents that work nights to meaningfully enforce any sort of bed time. At a young age I regularly stayed up till three or four in the morning. My biological clock is set for bar hours, which has always made it difficult for me to do anything before noon.

My parents aren't really into books and things and so I think they were happy just as long as I was reading. I'm not sure where I got the taste for deviant and subversive material exactly, but I'm pretty sure the piles of sixties and seventies Playboy Magazines laying around the house weren't blameless. Before I developed a real pubescent sex drive, I remember jokes about reading Playboy "for the articles". I read so many of those weird, funny, articles, that they must've had something to do with my preferences. The naked chicks certainly became important down the road.

Playboy probably had a lot to do with shaping my preferences, but so did a very early aversion to religious hypocrisy and weak scholarship. I remember a question I asked at a Sunday school class. "Is it possible that Christianity will disappear the way that other religions have?" The answer was a resounding "no". The reason given was because Jesus was "actually God, not just some story." It seemed like bullshit when I was ten, and even more so now.

So here I am as an adult, wondering what I should be doing with myself and quickly getting over the fact that for a long time I was bummed out that I was basically a bartender. I let others make me feel bad about this career. There are all these spoiled fucking babies in the industry that have one foot out the door and are always going on about the day they'll get out of bartending (I know because I have been one of them). No more.

Bartending is as valid of a techne as any other. My parents were able to raise me off of it, and I have been able to work most of my adult life behind a bar, taking care of myself. It, like any other skill, needs practice and further education. If you want to be really good at something, you need to try and know everything about it, and with that in mind, I'll be launching a new site soon.

It's going to be about bars and bartenders. Working at night, history of booze, social movements, bulshit tales, and alcoholic apocrypha. I don't have a site name yet, so a lot of the initial writing will be here.

Some content guidelines:

1. Tipping will barely get discussed, everyone wishes they made more and the world is full of assholes without a clue. That pretty much sums it up. Oh, and fuck the English, The Germans, and Med-School douchebags. They're the worst.

2. Interesting trivia stuff. Like did you know that NASCAR's origins are in illegal booze smuggling?

3. Staff biopics. I've always felt that working in a bar is sort of like working on a pirate ship. The crews are always interesting in a Master and Commander sort of way.

4. Only very interesting drink recipes. If you need to know how to make a Seabreeze, you need to get the fuck out.

5. Methodology of professional bartending.

Dirty Old Suit, Messed Up White Boots

2009-10-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

Last night's Pogues show took me right back to my experience at the Black Sabbath Reunion show nine years ago. Shane Macgowan and Ozzy Osbourne are both barely intelligible until they begin singing. The banter in between songs could easily be some sort of chortling language overheard in the Mos Eisley Cantina.

The pre-show buzz was that Macgowan had gotten himself a new set of teeth to replace the rotting fangs that he's been gumming down whiskey and cigarettes with the last half century. Rumor has it he's even been doing a spot of Yoga. Neither seemed likely after seeing the man in person. He and the band sounded great, though as the show went on he sang only every other song. The highlight of the performance was "Dirty Old Town".

Whenever a venerable act passes through SF the crowd is usually good for people watching. The Pogues fans certainly delivered. One long haired hippy was dressed in a soiled white three piece suit. Another ancient heroin rocker had a pair of boots on that looked like they could have been part of Nick Cave's costume from Johnny Suede. How ruined do a pair of white boots has to get before they go in the garbage? Maybe they were a gift from Johnny Thunders?

A recurring ensemble was the rockabilly-nerd: cuffed jeans, black horn rimmed glasses, black t-shirt, Chuck Taylors, seven dollar barbershop doo wop cut.

I've always kind of liked the mythology of greasers (The Outsiders is one of my favorite books), but these cats have more in common with Civil War recreators than delinquent youth. It's just not evolved. Look at someone like Jesse James. Say what you will, but you can't deny he is a real deal motor thug. I see that dude and I see an evolution of what it means to be a greaser. It is an aesthetic driven by poverty and masculinity where both are addressed by machine craft.

When I see these uniformed nerds I think, was being a skinhead just too hard?

Now I don't know these gents from last night, but I have known a few over the years and they are, like most people, tolerable once you get to know them. They will often say they dress that way because they "can't be bothered about fashion" or are just into "classic American style". That is disingenuous. If you want to see real Americans that just don't give a fuck about fashion go to peopleofwalmart.com.

I myself totally understand the drive towards wearing a uniform. I myself spent a long time dressed in the gothic-industrial Skinny Puppy fan parameters. It was easy once you knew the rules (leather suspenders, dredlocks, facial piercings, long sleeve Einsturzende Neubauten shirt, black shorts, combat boots, done). When you're rocking a style tribe look, you don't have to worry so much.

It's much harder to develop a unique style. I myself am inept. My wife, however, looks pretty well put together. I basically only wear black t-shirts, jeans, and Vans. I am every bit as uniformed as the nerds I have given such a hard time. Like them, I don't really have the patience/skill/finances to separate myself from the masses but I don't want to be rocking thrift store Sean John, either.

Every once in a while I look around at fashion websites (the sartorialist.blogspot.com is my favorite) just to see what people are up to. To look at me you would think this was sort of like a Vegan reading a BBQ cookbook. I may never get beyond my own uniform, but I can certainly appreciate when people dress well.

This brings me to the Rachel Zoe Project. At first I hated this show. It's about rich people doing rich things. I just couldn't relate. I was especially opposed to this show being on for two reasons: it costs me an hour of sleep and I feel like it drives unhealthy consumerism. My wife is all about it and we basically have an arrangement that means I can force depressing news shows on her, but then we must watch the E Channel. This is probably why I am so up on current culture.

The thing about Rachel Zoe is she's basically a superfan. She has more in common with Quentin Tarantino than other celebrity stylists. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of the industry and distills only the cool parts. What makes her unique is that she seems to actually be in love with the fantasy aspect of fashion. She blushes when she meets designers like a teenage fan at a rock concert. Watching her go through her jewelery collection to decide what to sell was like watching my friends that have massive comic book or record collections.

I can appreciate Rachel Zoe because she has a well developed skill that was honed through being a fan.

My brain must be dehydrated.

Roller Derby/Crossfit/MMA

2009-10-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

I really like when people do things without financial motivation. When I see someone hitting bags at the gym preparing for a fight that might never come, participating in sports no one really cares about, and climbing plastic rocks without an audience I know that they are there doing it because they want to be there, not because there is a future in it.

Having a future in something is overrated anyway. Especially when future is defined as financial security. That said, I'm glad that Crossfit is getting as big as it is and Drew Barrymore's Whip It might bring a little fame to a bunch of girls that are beautiful and tough in a way that the media hasn't wanted to show (sure there are alt-porn stars now with their own view of pretty, but most of those girls would be able to do porn even without the tats).

Crossfit has been trying to evolve into its own sport for years. The exponential growth of the Crossfit games proves its viability. If fat strong men can make careers out of throwing kegs and logs I don't see why Crossfitters can't by doing Fran.

What I like about this stage of its development (which has much in common with the early MMA days) is that people are going balls out with little to no financial incentive. Sure, the Glassmans appear to be raking it in and some affiliates are off the chain busy, but it's not even remotely as profitable as it is hard. Even the gyms are different.

I've worked out in big box gyms where you might see the same person everyday for years and never say a word to them. You just look over and think "wow, what strange grunting noises" or "that bitch has outstanding abs", but that's it, no connection.

A good Crossfit affiliate (at least the ones I've been to) has more in common with a neighborhood sport's bar than a hamster wheel treadmill facility. You're surrounded by those you know well and kind of know and even those you might jsut nod at. And you cheer for a team together, but that team is the assembled members doing the WOD. You're cheering for yourself. You're cheering for some old man that's got you by twenty pounds on a deadlift and a woman that can outbench you by thirty.

Thoughts on Whip It and Zombieland

2009-10-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

Zombieland and Whip It are both very enjoyable, very sweet movies. They're full of pop culture references, unlikely heroes, and love. All things I should admit to liking more than I do.

Whip It could have been cast with young Hollywood sex pots and up and coming Tween Idols. Drew Barrymore chose a much better route. All of her stars are beautiful women, but they are not perfect to Hollywood's standards. She photographs laugh lines and scars and stretch marks. Her Roller Derby girls are beat up, bruised, and real. They have patinas like classic cars.

Juliette Lewis plays an excellent villain, but she is also queen of the late bloomers.

Ellen Page is smart and eager, you fall for her as she falls for her rock star boyfriend.

A sports movie can only end in one of two ways; a win or a loss. A good movie makes the outcome believable. Rocky loses (amazing how many people don't know this) but he wins because he shows up. The Indians win in Major League because they manage to unify their diversity. Both approaches work, no matter who wins.

The agenda of Whip It seems to be making a pronouncement/affirmation that every moment matters, that beauty is not restricted to hose who have not lost their bloom (the terror of many a Jane Austen novel), and that your family isn't always just the people you grew up with.

Zombieland is also about found families. It has one of the most convincing courtships of any romantic comedies and Woody Harrelson as Tallahasee is my new hero. Thank god for Rednecks.

Four

2009-10-02T00:26:00.001-07:00

It's now four days off the bread, sugar, and dairy. I made it through a couple of Farmer's Market shifts without giving in (no small feat considering my access to free and delicious food). I would have to give this little experiment the thumbs up.

My sleep has been excellent. I have reduced soreness from exercise. I haven't crashed in the middle of the day. I feel energized.

Tomorrow is also my third official day of the Rippetoe/Onus Wunsler Program. My projected goals for this are the following:

1. 15lbs. of lean muscle gain (current weight 150lbs.)
2. 300lb 5 rep max deadlift (225 current)
3. 225lb 5 rep max backsquat (195 current)
4. 125lb 5 rep max overhead press (100 current)
5. 20 consecutive pullups (11/8/7 current)
6. 175lb bench press (145 current)
7. Be flexible enough to put hands flat on the ground in a forward bend (very close)

Observant readers familiar with Rippetoe's suggestions will note that without drinking dairy I will be unable to chug the recommended 1 gallon of milk a day. Well, this is recommended as a cheap way to get around 1800 calories extra of high protein meal in daily. I am using my resources to try and approximate this with fresh fruit and grass fed beef. I am also still using the Vega plant based protein, which I still love even if it does taste like dirt flavored Jamba Juice.

Vibrams. Uh, Not So Much.

2009-09-29T19:21:00.000-07:00

There is only one store in San Francisco that you can go in and try on the Five Fingers. Injeanious on Castro St. No, that's not a typo. Ever wonder where gay men get all those camo-shorts and replica vintage shirts? Wonder no more.

Actually, the folks there were really helpful. They sell about 3000 Vibrams per month, according to the clerk and usually run out of the common sizes and popular colors within a day or two of receiving the shipment. There's actually a list of people waiting for them.

It's tough to say what size I would need. The heel felt slippery on the approximates to US 10 1/2, but maybe they fit that way? They are also sort of crappier looking than I had imagined. People online say the quality is good, but compared to what?

I'm still going to get a pair when they come in my size, but I can't even imagine what running in them would feel like. They kind of slip around like socks and are much less stable and "barefoot" like than I had imagined.

Since the program du jour is heavy lifting these days, I might just think about getting some weightlifting shoes instead. Rogue Fitness shoes look pretty good and aren't crazy expensive.

Regarding the program: I went to a yoga class today and felt destroyed. Rippetoe suggests days off being true non-activity days, letting muscle build. I thought yoga would be light enough, but fuck, I was wrong. My back is crazy sore (in a good way) and many of the poses were just pure torture. Going forward I'm going to just follow the program and not fuck it up. I might even reduce my climbing down to one or two days for the next eight weeks.

After yoga I tried some of the new routes at PG. There are tons of cool new bouldering problems, but I was so fatigued that nothing much better than a v2 really came of it. There are quite a few v1-v4 overhang problems that look like a lot of fun.

I don't think the Rippetoe Program is probably the best for bouldering, but it isn't the worst either. I'll probably stay on it until I've gained 15 pounds or leveled off in gains on the lifts. After that it's Crossfit, all the way. I want to return with enough strength to do the WODs as Rx'd.

Fun times. Except for the yoga.

Range of Motion

2009-09-29T10:09:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a fairly successful lifting day. My working sets for deadlifts are now 225#, backsquat is 195#, and dumbbell benchpress (always relatively low to my overall fitness) has creeped up to 60# each arm. After a few days of really clean eating and thorough stretching, I am absolutely certain that the order of concern for the average person should be: diet, flexibility, exercise.

The Overhead Squat is widely considered to be an excellent indicator of strength. If you take my backsquat and my overhead press together as gauges, I should be able to do at least a hundred pounds here, but I can't. I can barely lift the bar for a complete rep. The culprit is chronic shoulder inflexibility brought about by years of bartending and motorcycle riding. The motion of lifting bottles upside down and pouring them thousands of times combined with hours a week of holding a sort of hunched over riding position have left me in a sorry state. In just a week of trying to fix ther problem through stretching I have found small, but noticeable increase in this lift. It isn't because I got stronger, but because I got more flexible.

Yesterday I also got a little taste of why so many conventional fitness people clown on Crossfit. I have only ever done Crossfit at an affiliate. I've never had to cobble together a WOD from existing equipment and away from the ever watchful eye of good trainers. I've never had the option to just pick what I thought sounded like fun and do it. I've only shown up to work out and done what I've been told to do by qualified professionals in an appropriate environment.

These two dudes were doing some sort of variation of "Murph" or something like it with situps. The amount of floor space these two dudes were taking up was kind of obscene. I had read about gym goers being frustrated by Crossfitters taking up too much equipment, but had never experienced it. It's not really that cool to be doing backsquats or deadlifts while people are running in front of and behind you.

Quality of work is often criticized as well. I was always baffled by this as well because the two Crossfits I worked out of, Oakland and San Francisco, are militant about work quality. Chin over the bar, chest to floor, below parallel. Everytime. In fact, a minor scandal erupted over range of motion a few years ago that mirrored an Olympic Tribunal.

These guys were doing the most abbreviated air squats, pullups, and pushups I had seen in a while. The goal seemed to be to reach a hundred pullups before moving on to something else. I have seen this effort several times, so I can reasonably gauge how long it takes and what a person looks like while they are doing it. It was sort of shocking to hear one of the guys yell out "75" really quickly and not have the look of gleeful torture I associate with these efforts.

I guess I'm sounding a little down on Crossfitters, but that isn't my goal. It's more like a praise for affiliates with high standards and good equipment. I mean, I've seen like fifteen people doing Fight Gone Bad at the same time at Crossfit Oakland with Mike deducting points for bad form left and right. These people's standards make them worthy competitors. People I would be happy to fight zombies with. When you break 300 on Fight Gone Bad or get an under 5 minute Fran at CFO, it means something.

I will certainly be mindful of full range of motion from now on (though I am pretty solid on this).

In other news: the iPhone Tabata Timer continues to be well awesome and worth the two bucks it costs.

Post LSAT Joy

2009-09-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I finally took the LSAT. I don't know my score yet, but I feel really positive about everything except the logic games section. Despite taking a prep-course, I never really got the hang of them. That section will basically be keeping me out of Harvard. I estimate my score as somewhere between 158-165. A 167 is the score I need to even begin considering Boalt. Fingers are crossed.

The LSAT was actually a huge vexation and now that it is over, I have complete control of my intellectual pursuits. My major hobby is nutrition and fitness (I wish I looked more like it was), so starting today I can read the ten or so books (mostly hobby related) I've had on my shelves for weeks.

Some of the books I'll be reading/re-reading over the next few weeks are:

How To Eat Move and Be Healthy by Paul Chek (started today)
Starting Strength 2nd edition by Mark Rippetoe (started today, I'm surprised by how much new info is in here)
Training For Climbing by Eric J. Horst (started last week)
Stretching Scientifically by Thomas Kurz
The Thrive Diet by Brendan Brazier (almost done)
Paleo Diet For Athletes by Loren Cordain

What I've really decided is that the proper order of concern for the fitness oriented person is diet first, rest second, work third. You can seriously fuck up all the effort you've made with the slickest program with a can of Pringles and a liter soda. If you don't rest you won't heal. Then you of course have to get off the couch and lift something uncomfortably heavy and/or get the heart beating out of your chest.

Somewhere in between rest and work I would place stretching. I've never been flexible. In high school when we took the Presidential fitness test I remember passing everything except for the pullup test and the flexibility test. I'm about six months from being able to do one arm pullups, so that's taken are of, but the toe touching remains a constant struggle.

I've got a mild lordosis in my back that needs to be addressed, too. My plan of attack? Yoga twice per week, religiously adhered to schedule of post exercise stretching, a morning walk in Vibrams Five Fingers (more on this later), and the inclusion of overhead squats in my warmup. I'm also down with the foam roller, I just need to get a better routine for it.

I talked a huge amount of shit about the ultra-fruity looks of the Vibram Five Fingers, but I have come around to the idea of them and plan on buying a pair tomorrow.

Here's why: I noticed that when I was doing dishes in the kitchen while wearing shoes my lower back would start to ache. The height of the sink isn't particularly weird, nor do I spend very long in front of it. I also noticed that when I deadlift in running shoes (or actually any shoes) my lower back would be sore for days.

When I wash the dishes barefoot or deadlift barefoot, there is no pain. Zero. I can also lift about ten more pounds barefoot than with shoes, overhead press and deadlift

Another observation I made was in a Yoga class. When doing any sort of balance work on one foot where I can look at my foot, I noticed a severe amount of twitching and shuddering. It's like my foot is having a seizure. These shakes travel up the leg and make my balance heinous. Tree pose is a near impossibility sometimes.

Walking about barefoot in a gym is a terrible idea. There is so much fungus and bacteria on the ground that you will need to find a spider monkey based vaccination to kill that shit. Walking barefoot on the street is also a no-go; between broken glass, needles, and various other toxic wastes, you'd have to be crazy. Barefoot in nature is also not happening until all species of worms are eradicated.

Enter the world's ugliest shoes. Vibrams Five Fingers. These weird things seem to be the business where bearfoot needs meet horrible disease ridden reality. I read about everything worthwhile on them and one thing kept coming up over and over. People who wear them keep mentioning the reduction or elimination of back pain and the near correction of lordosis like problems.

I'm in.

The plan? Never let my wife see them on my feet. I'm pretty sure she would never sleep with me again if she saw them. I intend to wear them during two activities. Tomorrow I start walking the dog for twenty minutes before breaking the overnight fast (there are supposed digestion benefits). It's low impact walking and short distance. I may add a weigh vest to this for no good reason. I'm hoping the dog will lose weigh, too.

The other activity is going to the gym. I figure I'll have them on for about two hours a day. If my back feels good and my strength and balance gets better, then I may become a full time shoe weirdo.

Also starting tomorrow:

1. Thirty days of no dairy
2. Thirty days of no bread
3. Thirty days of writing five pages a day
4. Thirty days of not buying breakfast, lunch, or coffee from restaurants.
5. Thirty days of 1 hour maximum internet use

The Cure

2009-09-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

Strenuous exercise and close control of diet have been the magic formula for emotion control for me. When a righteous funk sets in I can usually find a correlative stretch of bad eating and laziness right there along with it.

Yesterday marked a strong return to Iron Therapy and climbing. I was able to comfortably pull 225# off the floor for a solid and pain free 5x5. Prior to that I managed to get to the top of a 5.10c
on ropes. It was a war and I couldn't tell you how many times I slipped off the rocks and ended up hanging, but I touched the top and felt better for it. Grass fed bbq sandwiches made with Prather beef and Dana's Hilljack sauce completed a successful evening in the gym.

One day I will hopefully break myself from sleeping so late. I barely made it to a Yoga class at noon today, sweated through it, and still felt sleepy. After Yoga I climbed for a bit, push pressed 115# 5x5 (actually a PR for me, out of nowhere), and then used my new iPhone Tabata Timer for a set of Tabata pullups and Kettlebell swings. Writing this all out, it seems like a lot, but it was all fun to do and I don't feel hammered at all, even though I feel like I pushed it.

My strength, flexibility, and climbing are all improving. Not super fast, but measurably. The only thing that really seems to be suffering is metabolic conditioning. I went jogging a few days ago and just felt like I was breathing gasoline. Hopefully the use of a Tabata finisher may help with this somewhat.

For me, remaining positive is a constant effort. I have to be ever mindful of not slipping into my natural state, which is a miserable one. I've come to look at this as no different than working out. Breaking out of this flabby/surly mood has been the hardest thing for me. Perhaps of I persevere I can be more like my attitude heros: Matthew McConoughey and Woody Harrelson.

It's too bad I don't smoke weed, it would probably be easier, like steroids.

Max Avg. Theme Revisited

2009-09-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

The sun is shining, so this will be short. When I dissolved my old blog, Doomsday Fitness, in favor of Maximum Average, I did so as an attempt to close a chapter on my life. School was over, the project that the site was started for was completed, I was more or less done with apocalypse preparation.

The Honors thesis that Doomsday Fitness was attached to didn't exactly collapse, but it did fizzle a bit. As with all work more time, more research, more editing, less distraction (full time work/wedding planning) would have been great.

The project did allow me to explore some of the psychological motivation driving my interest in the end of days. Interestingly enough, I am more or less cured of the anxieties I associate with the obsession. The Rhetoric Honors project is probably not really intended to be Psychoanalytic, but for me it was.

Doomsday Fitness also gave me a position from which to argue the relative merits of certain fitness regimens. In all things the question was "would this allow me to survive the median type apocalypse?" If you are dealing with this question honestly the only things you really need to be able to do are:

1. Carry a load of camping gear long distances.
2. Shoot out to 300 yds.
3. Recognize arable land and use it.
4. Keep calm.

The average rural hunting enthusiast would probably have a better chance of surviving doomsday than any number of "superfit" office workers. This realization did a number of things for me. I know I am not a country boy and therefore would not likely survive. I am not likely to become a country boy. The threats that would make me wish I was are not actually proximate.

So if you come to realize you are no longer afraid of a future you will not likely survive that is unlikely to arrive, what do you do with all that free time?

I started Maximum Average with the hopes that by exploring an actual life lived by an average person (myself) intent on maximizing the potential of such a life I would make create a body of useful written work that might be able to parlay into a career as a writer. Bonus points would be achieved if I could cleanse myself of certain anxieties about this life (like I had done with Doomsday fitness).

It's been a while now and looking on this blog, I see it for the failure it is. The theme is simply not fun to write about. My daily life divorced of hope and fantasy is barely worth discussing. The research and reading I have done over the past few months has largely involved ultra-realism, Atheism, Washington politics, and the depressing conditions of a shrinking middle class.

There is nothing Magickal about this subject. There is no charm. The only humor is tragic. Reality sucks. Christopher Hitchens challenges debators to name one ethical decision or action that could be made without the benefit of god (extremely paraphrased). Few intelligent responses are offered. But Hitchens, a heavy hitter for Atheists, seems to dismiss something in the fantasy that religion helps create. Without fantasy or positive thinkng or dreaming life seems less glittery.

I'm actually always impressed at how lame Believers seem to be in their arguments when they debate someone like Dawkins or Hitchens. Mostly this is because they seem to be mostly Fundamentalists of one stripe or another. They are heavily invested in a particular belief system and are extremely threatened by its dismissal.

People who believe in static religions sort of remind me of people who still use Friendster and refuse to get on Facebook. It's basically the same thing, but advancements have been made, dude.

Anyway, the above is pretty half baked. I would distill it to the following:

1. Maximum Average is a failure because there are no hopes or dreams or fantasies associated with it.

2. My life during the last few months has been more or less a failure for the same reasons. I have relentlessly pursued an agenda of career searching and bill paying and future worrying that is unhealthy.

3. Giving in to myth doesn't seem to cause harm, unless it becomes dogmatic and prevents a shifting of perception.

4. Organizing a system of fantasy that aesthetically enhances a boring life is more or less what all religions do.

5. The most useful or at least Utilitarian of all these fantasies seem to be the ones that emphasize postive thinking, altruistic acts, and action against slothfulness.

6. The future of this blog will be decied over the next few days, but I think it will be torn down for someting new.

Life: One Failure at a Time Please

2009-09-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been feeling like a colossal fuck up. It doesn't take much effort to find the proof. Non-existent checking account balance, unwritten books, skyrocketing debt, indifferent friends, disappointed wife, weak efforts in the gym. This isn't exactly positive thinkng, but sometimes venting can be healthy. Maybe it will be this time, maybe it won't.

The biggest sadness I feel is when I start adding up all the time in my life I've wasted; playing iphone video games, watching television, working happy hour shifts where not a soul comes in, sleeping late, eating garbage. I feel like Schindler when he is looking at his car and gold ring wondering how much more he could have done, except I didn't save anybody. Ever.

I suppose we all have it in us to start new, especially we Americans, to just dust off our shoulders and stand tall, but lately it just seems like the deck is stacked against me and all those I know (weird run on sentence, but I like it).

Mostly it takes showing up and having the balls to risk a major shipwreck to make it. You've got to believe you have the sand to run a truck through a wall if you have to and that the decision to not hit the breaks will work out.

One of the saddest things about my own personal and reluctant atheism is that it has thrown a harsh light on my sloth. This sin seems even more grave when you know there will be no Deus ex Machina, no savior, to make it all right. When all you can do is stand on what you have done the phrase "by his fruits you shall know him" is even more severe. What have I done? I have tended bar and ridden a scooter an improbable distance. That's pretty much it.

Fuck. Well, I guess the pity party should come to an end now.

My advice to myself is my advice to everyone. Just pick something and stick with it.

I hate you.

Squat Attack

2009-09-09T23:56:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to get on an actual schedule with the CFWU/Lift/Climb/Stretch program. I'm aiming for five days of heavy 5x5s of some sort. So far it looks like it will be based on a Pavel program where you do one day of deadlift, one heavy chest day, one heavy backsquat, one lighter chest day, and one lighter backsquat. The other things I would like to add are an overhead press, weighted pullup, and overhead squat. I will most likely use these additionals on light days. Experimentataion will lead the way on this, I guess, but the aim is to keep it simple and consistent. I hope to have a real schedule by next week.

So far I've just been climbing routes kind of willy nilly. I'll do all the vos and then all the v1s and try to do a few v2s. The difference in route grading at the SF Planet Granite and the Belmont location is pretty major, at least as far as the v2s go. I ordered Eric J. Horst's climbing manual, so hopefully there will be more climbing specific protocols to follow

I've started incorporating the pre-lift shake and post lift shake as per the Rabbit Hole Program's suggestion. The shakes I'm using are vegan proteins mixed with iced green tea (rotating between Vega, Super Raw, and Hemp Protein). The effects are pretty awesome, actually. If you include the climbing I do after the lifts, I end up working pretty long. In correspondence with Mark Twight at Gym Jones last year I learned that vegetable based proteins tended to produce less soreness for endurance or long efforts in general.

I tried an experiment on myself last Fall where I went on an eight mile run once a week for three consecutive weeks at a strong pace, with three different proteins as fuel: soy, lean meat, and whey. Although the experiment lacked a lot of conrol, there seemed to be a pretty major difference. Soy worked the best, lean meat the worst.

So for now I'll be using the hellaciously expensive Vega as a protein.

Heavy First

2009-09-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

Today I switched things up a bit (at the suggestion of my trainer buddy) and lifted before climbing. I didn't really notice a reduction in climbing performance, but I did notice I was able to lift more simply because my hands didn't hurt from flailing against plastic rocks. I did a 5x5 dumbbell press using a girlish pair of 55# weights and immediately did flys at 25# on this kind of cool machine they've got at Planet Granite.

I usually never use machines because they don't move "realistically" but this one has a system that allows your arms to move about as if you were pushing free weights. Pretty cool.

After I get a few of my evenings back I think I might head back to the garage with Chris and Melanson for some heavy lifting and laughs.

The Anna Wintour Effect

2009-09-07T19:00:00.000-07:00

I think that from now on, whenever I see a lady over fifty trying to look young and hot, I'm going to tell them they look fine. Even if they don't. Hopefully I don't get attacked.

Set and Forget

2009-09-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

4 Month Goals:

100 consecutive pushups
25 consecutive pullups
one arm pullup
v4 climb
100 lb overhead squat
3 mile run in 18 minutes
Put hands flat on ground in forward bend
350 lb deadlift

Climbing/Cleaning

2009-09-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

Despite a relatively sharp reduction in calories, lean meats (protein), and heavy lifting, I seem to be gaining lean muscle mass at a somewhat faster rate than when I was pounding food and going heavy. I don't really know what to make of this, but my combo of extended Crossfit warmup, tonic lifting (60-70% 1rm 5x5), climbing, and the occasional Yoga seems to be working wonders.

I started about three weeks ago at 145. I now weigh in at around 151 with noticeable improvement in definition. My climbing performance is also measurably improved having gone from the ability to climb some v1 to most v2 routes. My calories have gone from about whatever an unlimited amount of pastries and meat is to about 1700 a day.

Best of all, I am experiencing zero pain anywhere except my feet (from standing on an uneven concrete floor for hours). My energy levels have also increased somewhat dramatically.

There are only three supplements I'm taking right now. I drink a vegan protein powder called Vega, I take fish oil capsules, and I sip on an iced green tea and honey mixture I make every morning. Sometimes I use the tea as the liquid base for my morning shake.

The Vega is hard on the stomache at first, but the lack of chemicals and inclusion of probiotics and various other hippy snakeoils seems to make it work very well. The first few days on it is certainly a "cleansing" experience.

More updates as they come. I think I may be cycling in a little Bikram yoga in the future.

Drawn as I am to the Crossfit model of working out till death is near, I can't help but wonder if it just isn't the right thing for my body. Moderation seems to be doing wonders right now.

Guns, Nerds, and Spiel.

2009-08-18T10:04:00.000-07:00

Most NRA supportin', flag wavin', moustache havin' good ol' boys I've met are nerds. That's right, nerds. Their attraction to WWII history, rifle calibers, and "freedom" is little different than a Ren-Fair goers love of Fantasy, fighting with foam swords, and dragons.

Every bit of attention that gets paid to these protestors that show up to town halls fully strapped is completely misplaced. It swells their egoes. It's like going on television and reporting that some dork with a black belt in Tae Kwon Doe can kill everyone he sees with a spinning back flip. Sure a gun is a potentially lethal device, but it is a tool and it is often in the hands of tools.

One lone Libertarian loser exercising his Constitutional right to have a gun in public is not the threat to Obama we should be worrying about. Obama is being dragged into a total bullshit bipartisan quagmire by old as fuck, indebted to Health Insurance Company assholes. His Presidential career is not going to be ended by a pistol, it's going to be ended by these people.

The night Obama was elected I was working in a club and I made more money bartending than I ever had in a single night. I saw a great stoic man weep tears of joy. I felt, for the first time in my entire life, connected with the Nation, even though I didn't vote for Obama. I actually thought things were going to be different.

But here we are; Obama is gearing up to be the next Jimmy Carter. One term. Ineffective. Too bad.

I hope I live to see the day that a candidate steps up and says he represents the following:
1. Pro-guns
2. Pro-gay marriage
3. Pro-legalization and taxation of marijuana
4. Pro-Union
5. Pro-Nationalized Health care
6. Anti-bullshit

Oh, don't think I've forgotten you gun nut idiots. Look. I get it. I like guns a lot. But you kooks are pretending the constitution and the "rainy decade" war you are planning for is still in the 1700s. It isn't. I've read a bunch of militia books. The chance of you living at your bunker and surviving on your ability to "shoot out to 500 yds" is slim to none.

There are well over 250 million people in this country. There isn't anywhere that you can "bug out" to that thousands, if not millions of people aren't already thinking about. The best case for you retards is to improve where you live right now. Know your neighbors. Meet the ones you don't even think you'd like. Here's an idea:

NRA member love to point out the fact that when a young child is taught the proper way to handle and respect a firearm, they are almost enver involved in shootings or accidents. If this is actually a curative to gun violence, then why isn't the NRA teaching little hood rats the proper rules to handling firearms?

This last point may be ridiculous.

99 Problems Google Translated 99 Times

2009-08-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

If you're havin 'girl problems I feel bad for you son
99, but I have no problem bitch

[Poetry and]
I rap patrol on the patrol a narrow corridor
Enemies wanted reassurance that I closed the coffin
Rap critics say cash, hoes "
Cap I was stupid because it is true
If you manage to stick to shoes
I was celebrating minute you havin 'weight
I am glad, fuck the critics can kiss my
If you do not like my words, you can forward
Do you have a beef with the radio when not
They play only in my country, and I'll manure
Rap Mags try and use my black ass
While advertisers want more money for advertising, Bitches
I do not know why I believe
And understand what intellect Jay-Z
I carpet Ritchie niggas is not stupid
99, but I have no problem bitch
Click here

[Chorus]
99 problems but a bitch is not
If you're havin 'girl problems I feel bad for you son
99, but I have no problem bitch
Click here

[Two hairs]
Year'94 my raw material
I talked to the mother fuckin 'mirror' of
You have two choices y'all to lift the car or (HM)
Back to the development of the double pedal to the floor
Now I am not trying to "not see the road, hunting with Jay.
Plus, I have money for war
I. .. If you are part of the road
I hear: "Boy, you know why I am not" you "?
Why do I have children and I am black and my hats real low?
Sound in the public mind, dear sir, I do not know
I was arrested, or believe that part of the moo?
"№ .. this is the main fifty-five"
"Liscense and registration of vehicles
"You Carryin 'arms to you, I know many of you"
Steppin shit I be issued nagpapaging
"No, it does not matter if the car around a bit?
Add to my glove box locked rear boot
I know well that you Gon
"You are strong as the transmission, you need a lawyer or something?"
Or someone or something important? "
Despite this, and I do not have at the bar, but I know a little
Not enough illegally search my bullshit
"See how smart you are, when it comes to K9"
99, but I have no problem bitch
Click here

[Chorus]
99 problems but a bitch is not
If you havin girl problems
I feel bad for you son
If you have problems with 99, but I hit bitch

99 problems but a bitch is not
If you havin girl problems
I feel bad for you son
99, but I have no problem bitch
Click here

[Three hairs]
Now, after not too long
And nigga I am, how
The problem is not in the definition of havin cats
But in terms of cat shit havin no God, in an attempt to push me
I tried to talk to him and to ignore the Lord
Pray to him, but also lead to idiots
You know the type of motorcycle
But it is not bust anti-grape fruit
The only thing that happens is "sgonna get clappin
He and his boys are Gon yappin to the captain
Go to the new cat trap
Using this system, Riff Raff
Devils floor again Scrat Chin
The photographer said that Snappin cameras
Yes, I tried to nigga shaft again
Half of the deposit if African MIL
It's stupid, because every harrasin ", in
Try to play a child saccarin HIA
But that is not good, not even me, as I understand, Venice
If you have problems, and 99 is not shit.
Click here

[Chorus x3]

Are you outraged that Rick
If your child

Fitness Redux

2009-08-06T00:21:00.000-07:00

As many times per week as possible do the following:

3 sets of 10x pullups, 10x pushups, 10x dips, 10x squats, 10x GHD situps at a continuous pace
3 minutes of Turkish getups
Bouldering until hands can't take it (or climbs rated one level lower than you are able to climb become impossible).
5x5 or twenty straight reps of one of the following: bench, deadlift, backsquat, weighted dips, weighted pullups, overhead press, overhead squat (use approx 80% of one rep max for 5x5 and 75% for straight 20 )
One of the following: Concept 2 sprints, running sprints, wallballs, or kettlebell swings
Stretch

Diet: KIPIF, keep it paleo incorporate fasting.

Supplemental: Yoga for tightness.

Bueller's Law

2009-08-06T00:13:00.000-07:00

If given the choice between an old vehicle and the ability to learn about computers at a young enough age, a child should always choose the computer as it will likely increase their earning potential and ability to navigate an increasingly technological global society.

If the child pays enough attention, this ability to operate computers will likely result in the accumulation of pardons from undesirable work and the eventual accumulation of an excellent vehicle (ex. 1961 ferrari 250 gt california).

Choosing the car may have the short term benefit of hastening sexual experiences and the ability to accumulate mind altering substances, but these experiences can likely be had after mastering the computer.

This is a work in progress.

God Is Not Green: Religious Obstacles To Environmentalism

2009-08-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

I think this blog post would make a pretty good book (it is of course a direct reference to the Christopher Hitchens book).

Rantaroo

2009-07-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

1. Anything being voted on by any politician or citizen should have an accompanying comprehension test. If you don't get at least a "C-" on the test, you don't get to vote. Potential problems related to the possible biasing of these tests are simply minor compared to the continuance of allowing the uninformed and financially motivated vote.

2. If we're moving towards a "Big Brother" system of health care anyway, lets outlaw junk food being purchased with food stamps. I want to see fruits, veggies, and brown rice in the carts of the most likely to need the health care (the chronically poor; I believe poverty is a condition imposed). I'm one of those assholes that judges your purchases in line at the store. A cart full of fruit roll ups and red drink just isn't the way to stay healthy. Your sugar consumption will bankrupt us all.

3. I say the Wall Street cowboys should be allowed to keep making profits if they can. Fuck it. However, severe restrictions should be placed on lending practices. Variable rates should disappear along with the belief in the right of every American to own a home. Greed was everywhere, not just on the trading floor. I remember overhearing assholes that had chrome rimmed Escalades in their "baby momma's" name talking about how they were gaming the system by living in section 8 and using the money saved to pay off zero down houses in Vegas. These small time douche bags are just as guilty for crashing the economy.

4. Cattle companies should be charged money to graze on public lands at an appropriate rate. This lesser known government welfare program is far more destructive to the environment than all the crackhead babies and parolee moms combined.

5. Disneyland needs to pay property tax. That money should go towards the funding of one flagship magnet school that will lead the way in teaching young children the sciences. How good for the American economy was Bill Gates? What if we could make another Bill Gates?

6. The top five most unworkable multi-billion dollar fighter jet programs should be scrapped immediately. All those monies should be immediately funneled into ground soldier equipment, strengthening the G.I. bill, and improving Veteran's lives. If these companies want to keep building the next generation of fighter planes, let them do it on their time and dime, and let the buyer decide what model is the best. This seems to work just fine for motorcycles.

7. If you are against people owning guns, you must be involved in a personal effort to pressure your local District Attorney to prosecute illegal firearm possession to the fullest extent of the law. If the criminals were actually punished, most of the ant-gun people would probably not need to worry about this so much.

8. Let's have at least one politician who claims to be in favor of helping the economy push the pro-marijuana legalization agenda. I do not smoke pot, but I do sell booze for a living and booze is every bit as destructive to society as marijuana is. Just because something is not as bad as something that is not illegal doesn't mean it should be legalized. However, I think the comparison shows that Americans are willing to (for the most part) accept the responsibility that comes with consuming a mind altering substance. The absolutely positive effect the legalization of this controlled substance will have on the economy is well documented. Also, ask any cop the last time they had to, with heavy force, subdue a drunk. Then ask them the last time they had to do the same to a marijuana smoker.

9. There should be more bicycle lanes. After they are created, if you aren't on one, get the fuck out of the way. While I'm on this subject, recently a man and his child were struck by a hit and run driver while riding one of those bicycles with the kid tow thing on the back. This is a terrible event and the driver should do some serious time. I do have to ask this: don't you think something bad might happen if you are dragging your child behind a bicycle in traffic?

10. Churches that mention political agendas in their sermons must be taxed immediately. The revenues generated from these taxes can go towards paying for a watchdog group. No one is trying to stop free speech, just a free ride. If you as a church feel the need to get involved with politics, then it's time to start helping pay for government. If you are doing public works, then goody for you, you get a tax break (not an exemption). Besides, I think the entire notion of churches being tax free is unnecessary since there is a Biblical commandment to "give and not count the cost".

True Cross Fit

2009-07-27T17:42:00.001-07:00

Sunday at the Lott house is a rather secular affair. I go to work under a tent in a parking lot in Oakland selling dead animals after getting about three hours of sleep. The atmosphere of the market is always at least somewhat jubilant and I manage to rarely import my bad mood from the previous night's work.

Sales do require an awful lot of speaking and by the end of the shift I am beat and really want nothing more than to sit in silence and not think about sustainability or farming issues. I almost always intend to go for a run. I almost always manage not to.

The evening is almost always spent with my wife who has so little time for herself that she tries to fit all of her extracurricular activities into about four hours of her life. Sunday afternoon is a furious whirlwind of brunch, vegan cooking, house cleaning, dog walking, exercise, and television. By the time I get home I want to die. This is usually when it is time for "us time". She cooks, destroys the kitchen, and I am forced to clean it. Most times I would rather just sleep through eating and not have to clean anything, but what she cooks is always tasty (even if it is vegan) and somehow we manage to enjoy each other.

The highlight of our night lately is watching the HBO vampire soap opera True Blood. The show is ludicrous. We love it.

A subplot of the show involves one of the characters, the sex maniac Jason Stackhouse, and his education/training at a militant anti-vampire Jesus camp. I note with some measure of shame in my recently sedentary body that Christel is just a little too pleased with the hardbodies of True Blood. In some ways I find myself demoralized in the same way a teenage girl probably is when she looks at a fashion magazine full of rail thin models.

My thoughts then turn towards weights and fighting and sometimes Crossfit. However, rather than lift weights or fight or doing Crossfit I am sucked into internet research on exercise, a fruitless pursuit for all but the accomplished trainer. What I've noticed is an explosion of interest in Crossfit and more generally "boot camp" style fitness programs in the general media. Yoga is still going strong as well.

What Functional Fitness (a term I will use from here out to refer to both Crossfit and Boot Camps despite their differences) has in common with Yoga is that there is often a group culture surrounding it and that it more or less works for a variety of fitness concerns (as everything does for six weeks as coach Dan John points out). What Yoga has on Functional Fitness though is a religious angle.

Yoga is deeply rooted in Eastern Mysticism. Even in the most banal and flavorless half hour gym class Yoga there is some element of New Age blathering going on. When I am more in the mood to indulge in Atheist rages against religion I find myself almost incapable of attending Yoga. The incense, the hippy dippy smiling, and the chanting all bug the shit out of me after I've spent a day watching Christopher Hitchens destroy Rabbi Schmuley in youtube debates.

I think: "fuck all this hippy stretching. I will lift weights and gouge eyes. I will smash everything and love nothing. I will deadlift myself into such strength and virility that King Kong himself will bow his head at my fucking riptitude. If anyone asks me if I am an Atheist I will tear their face off with reason and the calloused hands of a true lifter."

Usually it takes only a small ego induced injury to make me rethink this shit. Then I'm back in Yoga, trying to soothe my back, getting all blissed out and contemplating flying to India to live in an Ashram. I have always had a problem with consistency.

My goal is to have decent general fitness through an activity I enjoy that won't take up all my free time. I am currently lost, though there are many options.

If only I could generate cash while I worked out.

So check this out: there are millions of insane Christians out there. Many of them are out of shape (in this they just follow the national trend, nothing about being Christian probably makes one more or less prone to obesity; except perhaps believing you'll have washboard abs in the afterlife and just putting it off till you get a harp and halo). Functional Fitness works. Yoga has shown that people are willing to accept high levels of irrational mysticism with their morning exercise routine. So why not combine the two?

Functional Fitness For Jesus! We could call it "True Cross Fit". Think about it warm up with pushups with a cadence of Biblical verses. The combination of Evangelical spirituality with Functional Fitness seems like a marketing dream come true.

Crossfit is already sort of geared towards Nationalist weirdness and Republicanism. If we could just get people out of their megachurch pews and into a gym, we could make a fortune! FIT FOR THE LORD!

Functional Fitness has long upheld a need to "be prepared for anything" as one of the reasons why the training is so varied. What could be more of a test of strength than surviving the apocalypse?

If anyone wants to invest in the first fitness megachurch, let me know. I'm pretty sure we'll have to move to Texas, though

Battlestar

2009-07-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

The past few days have been consumed by depression concerning a work schedule non-conducive to exercise or learning. I simply don't like to work out alone and all of my favorite partners are unable to meet with me on my schedule, which is changing every week. I've considered attending a Crossfit gym, but the prices are too much for me right now.

Learning wise I am not so entrenched. I've been reading voraciously lately and wish I was in college now so I could talk with others who were interested in the things I'm reading (Marxist texts, Deconstructionist Texts, Socialist Science Fiction, Atheist Manifestos).

Thanks to McG's awful Terminator Salvation I am basically done using the Terminator franchise as a lens through which to examine Apocalyptic scenarios and Messianic myths.

Lately I have been concentrating more on the Wire and Battlestar Galactica. The Wire is interesting to me in the context of Marxism v. Capitalism. The drug trade portrayed is nothing less than pure free market Capitalism. Buy for a nickel, sell for a dime; kill anyone in the way of profit.

Battlestar basically examines a society besieged by constant threat and imminent destruction. Democracy vs. Military Fascism. If I had the time I'd like to set up a reading group that worked together reading the various "Philosophy of..." books on the two shows. There is a bookstore around here that allows people to teach classes, something I'd be interested in, if I was more well read (It'll probably be till I am old and grey before I consider mysef even remotely qualified to teach a Philosophy class).

Narcissus Shrugged: Fitness Posting A Go Go

2009-07-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

In about a month, once my finances are a little more secure, I will be headed towards some sort of Bay Area Crossfit affiliate to begin anew my fitness regime. Climbing has proven to be a little too irregular to maintain any broad based fitness thanks to a fairly irritating work schedule. It's still something I remain interested in and I count it as just about my favorite "sport" I've ever tried.

Time restraints are kicking in and Crossfit is simply the fastest way to maintain a pretty decent fitness level. It takes about an hour, works really well, and never gets boring. The prices are getting steep out there for someone on my budget, but I never really push myself as hard as I can without a pretty knowledgeable coach around.

I would love to continue with the Jiu-Jitsu, but it's looking like that might have to go. Bummer.

Diet wise I'm in a spiral of organic, local, artisinal, garbage consumption. I am a consumer of Farmer's Market junk food and it needs to stop. People need to stop bringing me awesome pastries and cookies. Seriously. I love you, but I feel like crap.

My mental acuity seems to be rising, though. It's as if a switch in my head has been thrown and I can suddenly do LSAT logic games and problems. I'm not really that fast with them, but at the current rate of improvement I just might be able to swing admission to a good school (Boalt is my first choice).

My reading list has shifted in the last month from Indian Mysticism to Marxism. I'm currently reading Jack London's The Iron Heel which is kind of a Socialist primer. It is truly amazing how prophetic London (channeling Marx) was. The current financial crisis maps perfectly on to the plot of this Dystopian book in quite a few ways.

I am relatively ignorant to the wider range of Marxist/Socialist literature, and certainly don't count myself as one of their number, but I can't help but marvel at how "right" the analysis of class struggle feels.

If I were a slicker writer I would dust off the chapter of a book I wanted to write that was supposed to be a sort of Fight Club for the Farmer's Market/Farm Punk crowd and make a sort of updated Jack London social novel.

I wonder if Chuck Palahniuk was influenced at all by London? The Tyler Durden character could certainly be a "blonde beast" like Martin Eden or a primal man like Wolf Larsen. If I were to attempt a book like Heel or Fight Club I would probably start off with a "soft man" protagonist and a "hard man" antagonist like in The Sea Wolf and Fight Club, but I would downplay masculinity issues and push a more post-modern interpretation of sexuality (something along the lines of Judith Butler's work).

Nietzschean ideals are tempting to introduce, but I'd probably try to go more with some deconstructionist and post colonial thinkers for horsepower.

With all of this high brow shit backloaded, I would aim for a fairly "swasbuckley" tale; lots of sex, violence, and adventure.

Of course, this is just me blabbering about an idea that probably won't happen anyway. My masterpiece will, for now, remain unwritten.

Gone But not Forgotten

2009-07-06T11:26:00.000-07:00

The people who are ultra-famous and dying now sort of remind me of those building sized super computers of the seventies. Huge, flashy, space monopolizing behemoths that served a great purpose, but ultimately need to be broken down and recycled.

The global entertainment celebrities of previous decades rose with the expansion of media like surfers on a great wave, but no wave can be ridden forever and now these "icons", huge though they may be, are falling. It is the end that waits us all, no matter how much we may have been able to pop and lock.

Some circles of the "blogosphere" constantly wish "Hunter S. Thompson were here to see this" (this is mentioned several times this week on Huffington Post in reference to Palin's failin'). I was at a writer's meeting last week and it was as if no one could get beyond Thompson. Gonzo gonzo gonzo.

He was awesome. No doubt. But he is gone and there is still a need for what he did. Luckily there are growing voices all over the internet and traditional media. Rolling Stone correspondent Matt Taibbi is one to watch as is the anonymously monikered "Tyler Durden" over at www.zerohedge.com. They are both taking on the global investment corruption and doing so with wit and ire.

I think that things in this country are now finally getting bad enough to produce some real art and writing again. Nothing worthwhile ever seems to get made when things are going all right. Writing that gets remembered takes pain and rage and grit. We've been in pain as a nation for a while now, rage is building, hopefully grit will develop as well.

Michael Jackson Stuff:

A few weeks ago I went and got hugged by an Indian saint/guru named Amma. I have a whole lot more to say about the experience in a longer piece, but I will relate a story she told. To be extremely brief: when Alexander the Great was dying he planned his funeral. A key feature was that his arms were displayed to all who could see them that they were empty. He wanted everyone to know that a man who had posessed so much in life took noting with him to the grave.

What about fame? If MJ is any indication you can take fame with you to the grave and if you are survived by a corporate entity that bears your name and continues to make money after you are gone, can you really be said to have died empty handed? I've been reading some weird critical theory stuff about the internet and corporations generating the Ubermensch and whatnot. Interesting stuff to think about, but somehow flawed like the Singularity junk.

All of the above could have stood to be edited or thought out more.

Riding the Rails, or Fuck Triumph

2009-06-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

Another esoteric failing in my motorcycle's electrical system has once again forced me on to the municipal railway system of San Francisco.

A major draw to owning a new motorcycle was the belief that parts availability would be better for a brand new bike than the vintage machines I usually relied on. I mean, it just came out, the shit has to still be in production, right? Wrong.

It was easier for me to drive to Raber's Triumph Parts in San Jose, buy whatever thirty year old part I needed, and then beg my extremely busy mechanic friends to help me fix my 1974 Bonneville than it is to get my 2006 Speed Triple back on the road. Munroe Motors never has anything in stock and is always backed up with work from weekend warriors and their Ducatis.

I am a working class man that depends on my bike to get to work. But what is my option for a new bike that won't let me down? Something Japanese?

Even my Vespa was a better bike than the Speed Triple. I have 20,000 miles on my bike and everyone that deals with new sports bikes looks at me like I'm driving a Celica with 300,000 on the clock. Really? A modern motorcyle is fucked after 3 years or 20,000 miles? I put more than 20,000 miles on a single piston in a thirty year old two stroke scooter, ran it on shitty Mexican gas and outboard motor oil for 2,000 of those miles, and never had a single bit of engine trouble.

Whenever I end up back in the shop with this English albatross R. Buckminster Fuller's quote/command "do more with less" sounds over and over in my head.

If I were to be totally honest I could trace my desire to own a new fangled race bike to the 2006 Moto GP weekend. After watching Stoner and Rossi and the rest of the thoroughbred racers perform physical miracles of force manipulation I was hooked, my ego took over and all I could do was plan on how to quench my "need" for a fast bike.

Now don't get me wrong, I am a total motorcyclist. I love all kinds of bikes, I ride everyday, and enjoy riding everyday (even in the rain as it takes a certain amount of perseverence and fortitude to suit up and ride to work when it's coming down), but I'm really more about long haul riding and artisinal custom work.

Meghan McCain

2009-06-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

Meghan McCain, the former presidential nominee John McCain's daughter, is hip, fashion savvy, writes funny blogs, is self deprecating, and relatively attractive. For a writer, these are all pluses. For a Republican these are abnormalities.

She is right on when discussing sex, gay rights, and pop culture. Her war with Ann Coulter is an amusing dust up that would make a great plot for a lesbian porn (Republican dominatrix teaches young blond lesson!).

Her personal blog and her blogging for the Daily Beast have a sort of small town girl in the big city feel which is sort of endearing on one level, except it just isn't true. She is from a powerful family, raised by a very public man, and has been exposed to the machinery of politics and celebrity for a long time.

Her writing and appearances constantly lament an "unfairness" associated with the framing of Republicans as unhip and extreme. This is because they are unhip and extreme. Nothing will ever change that. When you belong to a party made up of mostly older white men and their Evangelically lobotomized wives, you shouldn't even expect a glimmer of hipness. Even the Black Republicans are squares.

The best you can hope for is wit and irony, ala PJ O'Rourke (a man of strong conservative values who never forgets to call it like it is where Republicans are concerned). Meghan McCain certainly posesses sweetness, but sweetness does not do anything for conservatism other than mask it. It's a chocolate covered laxitive. Sort of appealing, but full of shit.

Meghan McCain's recent appearance on Bill Maher was sad. She was barely coherent, unable to intelligently defend her views, and kept complaining about being picked on. I felt bad for her, but this is a woman who has made every effort to distance herself from being the kind of Republican woman Ann Coulter is. She is right. She is unlike Ann Coulter.

Coulter is unapologetic and single minded. She sticks to her views, runs right the fuck over anyone who tries to disagree with her, and holds her own on the talk show circuit no matter how hostile the panel is. Even Bill Maher shows her a certain respect.

Now, I'm not saying that I support Coulter's views. Far from it. But I do respect that she isn't a fence sitter. She isn't trying to pretend that the only problem with the Republican party is that it just isn't perceived as cool or hip. The problems run far deeper than that. Meghan is trying to distract you from them with a cute pair of shoes. Ann is donning them as a power suit.

Meghan McCain wrote about how she doesn't understand why Coulter is so popular in the party. What she fails to understand time and time again is that Coulter is the party. Meghan McCain palls around with the fringe elements of the Republican party (The gay Log Cabin Republicans) and acts like they are the rising voices, but she is wrong. The only groups in the Republican party that represent "minorities" are there because they have found themselves in a tax bracket that benefits from Republican rule.

I hope that Meghan McCain comes to her senses one day and realizes that the party she is in doesn't make sense for a person with her values. The way I see it, she is there because of family tradition.

Lists of Lists

2009-06-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

A list of things I'm into right now:

1. Bouldering
2. Yoga
3. Kali, the death goddess
4. Vintage Broncos
5. Dana's excellent BBQ sauce
6. Droning guitars
7. iXpenseit
8. Not having Lyme disease
9. Apple Cider Vinegar
10. Vegan desserts
11. Rainbow grocery store
12. www.verhext.com
13. The colors black, green, grey, and brown together
14. Warm weather
15. Harley Sportster cafe racers
16. Wood frames
17. Clean Apartments
18. My Crock Pot
19. J. Krishnamurti
20. Thinking about my hug from Amma
21. The Brian Jonestown Massacre
22. Alternative medicine
23. Living Frugally
24. Kung Fu Panda
25. Frye Harmess Boots

First Drops of the Rainy Decade?

2009-06-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was walking my French Bulldog through the streets of San Francisco. I imagine that sentence could be the set up for a number of anti-California/hippy/liberal/fag jokes. I mean the dog is French for Christ's sake.

But that wasn't the joke I heard. A chubby long haired man (kind of a cross between the German villain in Die Hard and a Hobbit) rode up next to me on a busted mountain bike and asked, "what's worse than a white supremacist?" I said, "I don't know" expecting some sort of joke related to the Holocaust museum shooting. He answered, "a black supremacist!". Uh, that's not really a joke dude.

This Hobbit looking Aryan followed me for three blocks bitching and moaning about the uppity Black supremacist librarians at the San Francisco public library and how they had denied him access because he was white. Fuck, was the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Children's Coloring Book checked out?

He said they were going to be sorry. I asked, "what like the dude that shot up the Holocaust museum?" He said, "that man is a Navy Veteran", a statement that could easily be interpreted as "that man is a hero".

He was certainly acting erratic and I thought I might have to fight him for a minute. How funny it would be for someone he probably thought was Aryans sympathetic (white skin and blue eyes) to beat his ass with half Jew fists using Asian and Brazilian martial arts. A true multi-cultural experience.

A little background on myself. I think advocating any sort of supremacy beyond the supremacy of individual rights, freedom, and merit is stupid. You don't get a gold star just because you're White or Black. You especially don't get a gold star if you are advocating the supremacy of a race and you look like an inbred yokel or dirty hoodrat. All too often White supremacists can't manage more than a beer belly and a Hitler T-shirt. How many black supremacists are in and out of prison?

I think that all declarations of White, Brown, or Black power are worthless. All it means is that two people of a certain color fucked and nine months later you fell out of a vagina. That's it. You stand on your own two feet with the help of the ones you love. It doesn't matter what kind of vagina they fell out of either.

Unless you have never left a trailer park or housing project in your entire life you have doubtlessly met someone different than you who was pretty cool. If you haven't you need to get out more and/or stop being a closed minded asshole.

Despite what all these retard conspiracy theorists might have you believe the coming "tribulations" are not a result of racial mixing, gay marriage, or paganism. It's greed that's to blame. Greed and the systematic destruction of ecosystems, exploitation of workers, and media driven hysterics. We have all been fucked by the man, but here's the secret (and I'm talking to everyone here): the man is not "White". No matter how many bankers or CEOs are pale faces, I can assure you they aren't looking out for their own kind. If they were, that kook that shot up the museum wouldn't have been destitute. I mean really, if there was really some sort of Aryan conspiracy to control this whole country, don't you think this life long Neo-Nazi would have some sort of 401-KKK?

If the holocaust museum shooter and the racist Hobbit are any indication, yes, there is a storm coming, but it will be a light breeze with pissing rain, nothing more if stopped by cooler, fitter, tougher radicals that know where the priorities are and act to stop actual degeneration in its tracks. Get over your attachment to the color of the vagina you fell out of, unite, and then you might be able to kick the shit out of the Greedocracy that is putting its boot heel in the face of evevry kind of person.

Nothing is true. Everything is permissible.

The Great Magnet. What a Fool I Was to Defy Him.

2009-06-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

Atheism, though championed by many intelligent people, is to me boring. Once you've decided there is no beyond or magic or faith or mystic experience on the horizon all there is is this. Look around. If you're anything like me the immediate is less than awe inspiring.

I choose to ignore the logical in favor of the mystical on many occasions. This is really no more egregious an error towards intelligence than, say, choosing to watch an awesome fantasy movie like Star Wars over a really depressing documentary. Sure there is beauty in both, but one's got lightsabers and the other's got bummer orphans and shit. Now give those orphans lightsabers or even a clumsy blaster, look out.

The important part of having an intentionally illogical outlook on life (Magickal Thinking) is to not forget the suffering that is real and not to rely on faith to stop destruction when there are real steps to combat it. Prayerful attitude is not enough. Dedication to "good" is not enough because good and evil are relative.

If someone swings a fist at your face you better move. Why the fist was headed towards your head has unlimited source and interpretation. Get out of the way. Prayer isn't going to stop concussion.

I just might be on a road I was meant to be all along.

Stretch, Climb, Lift

2009-06-02T23:48:00.000-07:00

Did three things today I haven't done in a while: yoga, rock climbing, and deadlift/backsquat.

After the yoga class I was all flitting about, feeling great, wondering why I did all the horrible stuff I've done to my body. I was positively euphoric.

Then I started climbing and realized my grip had become like that of a five year old. I slipped off of holds I should've been latched to with my formerly vice grip like finger strength.

Later in the day I passed through the gauntlet of ridicule that I knew was waiting for me at the Rabbit Hole (Chris N's garage gym). My back squat form looked good but I was lifting insignificant poundage. The deadlifts were equally sad. Punishment for taking so long off.

I have no real fitness goals as of right now, so it's a little hard to develop any sort of programming that may be intelligent. Instead I'm just going to try and fit whatever I can into my schedule; a few days of compound movement lifting, Jiu-Jitsu, and rock climbing early in the day with some yoga thrown in here and there should be a good base. Certainly not boring.

The only problem I foresee is trying to train for the Malibu Marathon, an event I am commited to (when will I ever have the opportunity to run my friend's first organized race?).

Drag Me To Hell and the Metreon Farmer's Market

2009-06-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

All in all I am pretty lucky to have the wife I have. The photo accompanying this entry is of her tearing up the dirt on a 125cc motorbike. She has impeccable fashion sense and a strong, dry sense of humor.

She is imperfect in a few important ways: she hates Jiu-Jitsu, a sport I love. It is to her a sort of expression of homo-erotic desire thinly disguised as "ugly wrestling with ugly ears." A professor of mine at UC Berkeley shares her position. She certainly didn't think it was fruity when I threw a crackhead that attacked her into the street, though.

I am a life long fan of horror films. She is not. I have never been able to make her come with me to see any late night showings of any gloriously bad splatter films. She has turned her nose up to special screenings of Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Sean of the Dead, and The Shining.

For one of my birthdays she told me she would take me to do anything I wanted. I chose to see Rob Zombie's Halloween. She hated it so much and was so disturbed by the irredeemable display of violence that she, in a fit of rage, started an argument that lasted nearly a week in which I was accused of sharing no similar interests with her (which is sort of true) and must actually be some kind of subhuman for enjoying the film so much (most movie critics hated it as well, but I laughed the whole time).

Given this history I was extremely surprised to hear her agree to go see Sam Raimi's new movie, Drag Me To Hell. It's important to go on little dates when you're married, and Sunday night movies are something we do from time to time. It may be pedestrian, but much of life is and it is something we can ususally agree on doing (thankfully I love romantic comedies even more than she does, something people are as shocked to hear about as they are to hear about my deep love of Bruce Springsteen, so I can acquiesce to her movie choices).

Anyway, I believe when you see a film, the entire experience from walking out the door of your house to leaving the theater is connected. I usually see movies by myself. I take the train, get there early, and bring a critical theory text of some sort and carve out a brainy little meditative space for myself prior to the theater getting dark. I don't buy snacks and I like to sit close to the screen.

Seeing a movie with Christel is a totally different experience. We arrive just on time, get a ton of junk food and sit far back from the screen.

The Metreon now has a sad little farmer's market at the entranceway. With less than five minutes to go, Christel was sucked in to the market hunting juice and Vegan snacks.

I had been to this market earlier in the week and was not impressed. The Metreon is a sad place that would certainly be locked and boarded up if it weren't for the theaters. Almost all of the shop spaces are empty. The architecture is a permanent monument to the foolish pursuit of making buildings that are designed to be "futuristic". The Metreon is a mid nineties vision of a future that collapsed with the Dot Com bubble bursting, banishing with it adults riding razor scooters and house music happy hour tech industry mixers to the dust bin of history.

On one level I quite enjoy the idea of using a failed urban space as a farmer's market. Recycling and repurposing are at the heart of sustainability, afterall. Unfortunately, the market just seems kind of sad. The ramshackle stands just need their tents and outdoor spaces to come alive.

This is how I would describe it: the Metreon Market (which I beleive is actually called the Island Earth Farmer's Market) reminds me of the scene in Blade Runner where the audience first sees Deckard. He is eating at a noodle stand in the middle of a dystopian city alleyway, full of other food vendors, when a flying police cruiser descends and takes him in to the station. The set is both familiar and unfamiliar (especially to audiences at the time the movie was released who may have never seen a "Tokyoesque" skyline). We have all eaten noodles, we have never ridden in a flying car, we have seen blighted alleyways, there are no advertising zeppelins flying low between skyscrapers (yet).

We have been to farmer's markets, the fresh goods and anarchist vendors are familiar, but under the flourescent lights of the Metreon they seem to be not a real alternative to the big food system supermarkets, but an overstaffed, poorly laid out Wholefoods. I wonder who, if anyone would choose this over the relatively close Ferry Building?

The architecture of the Ferry Building itself is even more conducive to the selling of foods and mimicking of the outdoot market experience (which actually goes on there several times a week). The space is airy, classic, and not at all "futuristic". I imagine it will be never become the dated and bloated embarassment that the Metreon is. The Metreon should just be bulldozed and replaced by a parking lot for a proper outdoor market.

Anyway, Christel bought an eight dollar juice from a vendor and we left to purchase more conventional food items. With large popcorn, large diet soda, and large pretzel mixing uneasily with our slow food juice, we found our seats; not too close, not too far away.

Drag Me To Hell is a great film for long time fans of Sam Raimi. Raimi's yellow 1973 Oldsmobile makes an amusing cameo. There are several visual cues that are also nods to his earlier work (a giant sized close up of an iPhone cleverly mimics the classic shot of the giant sized rotary phone of classic horror while simultaneously poking fun at actor Justin Long's "I am a Mac" commercials).

It's a film full of gross outs and spook house thrills. Christel was gasping and laughing the whole time and judging by her smile when we left the theater, she enjoyed it as much as I did despite not being an ultra nerdy horror fan. Perhaps there is hope for her.

All in all it was a wonderful date.

EDIT: There was a talking goat in Drag Me To Hell. It was awesome and I extend my apologies to dearest reader Chris N for not including this anthropomorphic fact earlier.

Farmer's Market Fashion Report #1: Introduction

2009-05-31T21:55:00.002-07:00

It's hard to say what season is best for observing the simultaneously practical and individually expressive garments of the Farmer's Market communities.

In the Winter all of the folks are bundled up in an effort to keep themselves from freezing under a cold overpass or wind swept parking lot. North Face jackets happen a lot as do various hats ranging from the ubiquitous beanie to the less formal spread of animal shaped head ware (how can you not buy eggs from a woman wearing a stuffed chicken hat, really?).

In the Summer post-riot girl back to land types wear sleeveless T-shirts and jean shorts that are just a hair too sexy for farming. The look says "don't look at my melons, but buy these melons". Grisly metal head burn outs wear cut off shorts revealing calf muscles earned from riding bicycles everywhere that horses might be expected to have.

Hot or cold, it's tough to compete with the ostrich leather boots and gilded buckles of the Mexican field hands who believe in dressing up on Sundays even if they're just selling artichokes. The personal trainer toned, Yoga lifestyle devotee trophy house wives of the rich husbands of Marin do give them a run for peacockishness, though.

There are more than enough apparel choices made that have never been a good look, too. The Peaceful Warriors with their floppy sun protecting hats and god awful Tevas (Shoedles; they aren't shoes, they aren't sandals) are a fashion scourge.

In an effort to catalog the changing fashion of the Farmer's Market scene, I will be offering a regular series of entries on the Maximum Average blog accompanied by photos of people with outfits that catch my eye. I'm inspired to do this as an homage to Scott Schumann's consistently great blog, The Sartorialist.

It must be noted that, while there was a time when I thought I looked quite sharp, my wife (a serious fashion enthusiast), thinks I dress like shit and that my clothes are basically rags. In a way she is correct, my clothes have been destroyed by my occupations (bartender/ market vendor), but I believe I have a certain eye for style. I think the wear and tear of life makes things interesting.

Teefy Sexy

2009-05-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

Flipping through a women's health magazine today I came across an article about adult retainers for the teeth. It seems the pearly whites (mine especially) have a tendency to move around a bit as age advances, edged about by gnashing and tearing.

My wife is highly critical of what she perceives as a certain "fanginess" that has developed in my smile over the last few years. My teeth are still extremely straight and sort of nice in a soap star way, but they have shifted about and with the waxing of a certain feral quality to my general hair and wardrobe (bad influence of bikers and farmers) she has become quite concerned. She is well put together, I look more like a beast everyday.

So it was for personal research I began reading this woman mag and its article/advice/advertising for adult retainers. A side effect of my wedding is that I now have fantastic health care, so should I seek preventive care for my fangs it is available at little cost. To make my bride happy I will probably do so.

The article was horrible, though. Not as far as composition, but content. After discussing a co-marital decision by the author and her husband to both slow down the decay of their grills she includes a bit of information that is just terribly personal.

"When I ask my husband to not put his retainer in just yet, it is a signal of amorous things to come" she reports. Fuck that. What sort of non rock n roll foreplay is that? Oooh, floss all you want, but don't even think of clicking those retainers in because it's sexy time.

Christ. Married couples all over the world have trouble with intimacy if the divorce rates are any indication. Is this a model of sexuality for aging lovers? I believe nothing will kill romance faster than the sharing of toiletry rituals. Besides, what man in his right mind wouldn't spit his retainer to the floor and crush it with his feet if it meant a little bit of action rather than another hour of television?

Baroque Ass Mothafucka'

2009-05-19T20:58:00.000-07:00

William S. Burroughs has been on my mind lately. I've read about 80% of his work and really enjoyed almost all of it. The first of his books I tried to read was Naked Lunch. I was in high school at the time and was, to be honest, just not well read enough to really get it. I must have read the intro about ten times without getting much beyond that.

After I read more work that posited Burroughs in a social framework, it made a little more sense to me. I think many adolescent readers that want to read Burroughs are actually looking for Junkie. It's a far more accessible novel, fairly autobiographical, basically a True Crime book, and is about drugs rather than drug metaphors. After I read Junkie I read a biography of Burroughs, a few more of the more popular Beat books, and the work that preceded them. After all of this, Naked Lunch opened up to me.

There is one thing about his life that I think young readers (especially those that are looking to justify substance abuse through the lens of literary artistry) should never forget: Burroughs was a trust fund kid. He inherited a decent sized trust from his family's adding machine business and never had to actually work to meet his minimum life needs (food, shelter). Sure, maybe he rolled some drunks in a subway to buy more smack, but it was hardly necessary.

I've known a few people over the years that basically worshiped Burroughs and could never see the degeneration of their own lives because they always viewed their own tragedies as episodes in some sort of metabiographical unwritten novel that would one day be published, possibly posthumously.

But kids, you need to actually write that book. Burroughs himself never really sat down and cranked out anything worthwhile until he got clean for a bit. I think people get mixed up with the order to "write what you know". So many people who write thought that they had to know drug abuse.

It's understandable. The most dramatic and successful writers of the 20th century were, for the most part involved in some sort of substance abuse: Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Stephen King, etc. Tune in, turn on, and drop out were the standard marching orders for a long time.

Another blog writer, Daniel Coffeen, made a post where he asked "where is our avant garde?" A commenter suggested it may be found amongst people like Joel Salatin, the grass farmer and author made famous (or at least profiled) by Omnivore's Dilemma. I believe this is a true observation.

After working in markets for a few years now I have met some truly off the wall characters, all of them are hard working and all of them are engaged in an economic model and lifestyle that I believe would liberate society if it were more widely adopted (yes I know there are problems, yes I know current population levels make boutique eco-shopping "unrealistic", that's what condoms are for).

Honestly, there should be photographers and writers descending on these communities.

Cyberpunk is becoming Farmpunk.

Plaid and Vans

2009-05-18T09:59:00.001-07:00

A few days ago I was discussing the Bay Area vintage chopper scene with my buddy Scott. I love the way stripped down Panheads look and sound, especially when they look like they did in the late sixties. Scott's buddy Max Schaff build bikes like this and maintains a blog at 4qconditioning.blogspot.com that pretty much sums up all that is right aesthetically where these machines are concerened.

Part of the fascination with any antiquated machinery for me is that a particular time period can be evoked simply by turning a key and kick starting an engine. It's like time travel for a moment. Riding a forty year old machine down the road has a mystical property to it that is what I imagine yoga and other esoteric meditation practices to be all about.

This view of the past is necessarily romantic. Schaff's blog bears pictures of Hells Angels of the time riding free. They are denim clad werewolves riding with an eternal full moon. In this space they are not out of work carpenters unable to deal with society after prolonged tours of duty in horrific wars. They are Cowboys. They are Nomadic Warriors.

Harley Davidson has a new ad campaign for its latest Sportster that looks like advertising execs came down to the streets of Oakland and extracted all that was stylish and marketable out of this time travelling society. If you're interested you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STmsBT7Lerw

It's just a matter of time before orange and black Vans sit next to fringed chaps at some Harley dealership. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this. Harley has been selling a lifestyle for a long time. Buy the bike, buy the scene.

I can't help but think about Baudelaire's Simulacrum when I look at this commercial. Harley is trying to sell a lifestyle now that is based on people who have built a lifestyle around the ideal vision of something that Harley used to be for a very small group of people. It's a copy of a copy.

The bikes still look good.

The Black Sox

2009-05-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

Observation: have you ever noticed how Anarchy boys and girls always wear black socks? Seriously. Next time you see someone wearing a direct action/AK Press/Earth First!/Propaghandi shirt check it out. Right between the Chuck Taylor's and cut off Ben Davis pants there shall be black socks without fail.