Third and Forever

The Comeback Kid

2009-10-05T17:53:00.000-07:00

Well my friends, you've asked for it and now you've gotten it...a new blog post! My return to blogging had an inauspicious start as I forgot my password cause it's been so long since I've logged into this account, I've been jumping through the hoops to retrieve the password and just now got it. I'm not sure what good this Mac's password remembering software is when it doesn't work on this page. Luckily it works on every other page though, so if someone got a hold of this computer they could log into my bank accounts, facebook page, fantasy football teams, porn si...er, historical book club accounts. And my return to blogging couldn't come on a better night as douche of the year Brett Favre is taking on his former team the Packers. I'm not sure how these two events correlate but it sounds good. I guess I could somewhat be considered the Brett Favre of blogging, right when you guys thought you were rid of me, I came back, and come back with a vengence I will! Also like Favre, I blog best after I've been hit with tragedy, and earlier today that happened as I stubbed my toe on the corner of my bed post. Not fun, but my loss is your gain. Be prepared to read as I spit ill venom kids, game on.

It's a big week as this upcoming Sunday is the Chicago marathon, the first marathon I've ever ran. So far I've only had one person ask how long that specific marathon is. Just to clear any confusion, all marathons regardless of location are 26.2 miles. Let me put that in perspective for you, if you went out and ran 1 mile a day it would take you 26.2 days to cover the race distance. That's almost a whole month, my goal is slightly better than that at finishing in a touch under 3.5 hours. Some crazy African dudes will finish in approximately 2 hours, that's amazing. One runner has apparently thrown down the gauntlet that he wants to break the world record for the marathon at this race, I for one hope he does. It would be pretty sweet to witness something like that, albeit by the time I cross the finish line that guy will be back to the hotel and showered, had lunch, and on his way to the airport. But you understand what I'm saying.

It's been a great year for me in terms of racing and luckily for me no matter what happens on Sunday, I'll set a personal record in the marathon. So I have that going for me. Earlier in the year I was chronicaling all the races I'd done and the number of shirts I had collected. The total at this date is 11 shirts, my collection is rather stout now. After Chicago, I'll probably do 1 more 5k just to lay down a smoking time before winter and call it a year. That's 13 shirts, no doubt I'll be living in race shirt oppulance. Most shirts are pretty good (I'd probably say the River Run half marathon is my fave, not the best design or highest quality material, but it's black and very slimming), with the exception being the Komen Race for the Cure shirt (cotton, we'll cut them a little slack and assume the money normally reserved for technical shirts went towards cancer research).

Anyway, I just wanted to wet your appetite for what should be a good week of blogging. I hope to do at least 2-3 more entries before the race, and no doubt the one after will be epic. I'm thinking Pulitzer. It's going to be an interesting week that obviously culminates at 7:30am central time this upcoming Sunday. 3 of my 4 fantasy football teams won this week, so we're off to a good start which I like. Talk to you later kids.

The Incident

2009-05-25T18:35:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't the big recap of the LOST season finale that you've probably been hoping for over the past week and a half. It is fitting though that the season 5 finale was titled 'The Incident,' then 2 days later I was in a major bike collision with another biker on the Olentangy bike trail a few miles north of my house. Definitely a major case of life imitating art, and no doubt ironic as well seeing how I'm a major league LOST fan. It was only fitting to name the accident for the episode. It's also fitting that after posting a picture of the Eric Idle biker character from European Vacation that got hit numerous times, the same thing should happen to me a few weeks later. I'm like a blog sage who's able to predict minor future events by posting pictures of them in advance, maybe I'll post a picture of a new Dodge Challenger and see if one shows up on my doorstep. Actually, if my powers are true, I might get hit by a Dodge Challenger. Maybe I'll hold off on that one for now and try another pic. Back to the wreck, I have to be honest by saying it was pretty spectacular. Me and the guy I collided with were going somewhat fast, not super fast, around a blind turn in a residential area of the bike path. After we saw each other, we both zigged the same way (me the right way, him the wrong way) and we absolutely DRILLED each other. I was sure I was going to break at least an arm and/or leg. I landed about 10 feet away from my bike in a guys front yard, landing on the grass was probably my saving grace, the other poor bastard landed smack dab on the concrete and severely messed up his shoulder (he seemed to think it was broken but he wasn't a doctor or anything, it probably was, it didn't look good). I only had a few scratches and felt good all things considering. Luckily the guy had his cell phone with him and was able to call his wife to come pick him up. It was a huge bummer and I felt bad, it was such a nice Friday and this definitely wasn't the way either of us envisioned our ride going. We determined we were both at fault and took the high road and didn't point any fingers, we were both travelling a little too fast through a highly populated residential area where we should have been riding more conservatively. The guy, Jim, was pretty cool about it actually, I offered to wait with him til his wife showed up but he said not to worry about it. I gave him my name and phone #, I haven't heard from him which is a good thing I guess. His bike was pretty beat up though, massively beat front wheel, broken chain, and other bent components. My bike was fairly unscathed, the front wheel was bent a little. It's presently at the bike shop getting service so we'll see on Wednesday if there was anything I missed. The rear derailler was loose but not broken, so we'll see. So, there you go Lauren, the story has been told, my conscious is clean.

And, just to show how much of a trooper I am, I ran the Komen Race for the Cure 5k the next morning. Hobbled and everything, I still made it. I was like Willis Reed at Madison Square Garden for the Knicks back in 70's or 80's or whenever that game was. I suffered in silence though as the Komen is a day for cancer victims/survivors and not for people in bike wrecks, so my story went untold so I wouldn't rain on my mom's parade. The event was pretty crazy though, I thought I was doing good by leaving the house with enough time to get in a 3 mile warmup and still have 15 minutes before race start, this turned out not to be the case. As I jogged closer to the event I was seeing people with bib #'s in the 40,000's! Holy crap, that's bigger than the Chicago Marathon! By the time I got there, I couldn't even find water so I could take my energy gel before the race, DAMMIT! Then, I went to get to where timed runners were supposed to be...uhhh no, not gonna happen. I think I started the race in about 150,000th place, not optimal starting position. The first mile was spent trying to get past people walking, holding hands, and generally trying to be in my way. At the start of mile 2, the crowd had thinned somewhat, but then this ahole kicks me in the foot as he tried to pass me. No big deal I thought, the course is crowded and there had been some arm contact and stuff up to this point so I figured he'd apologize and we'd move on. Sooooo, I look at him looking for a 'sorry man' or 'my bad' but the kid makes eye contact with me and says nothing. Hmmmm, now I'm getting kind of upset, a few more steps are taken and still nothing from my attacker. Game on dickhead! I get right behind the kid and stay about 6 inches behind him so he can hear my every breath, I even started breathing heavier than normal just to make sure he was aware of my presence. This continues until we get to the water stop at the end of mile 2 and the pussy quit. DOUBLE DAMMIT, now I can't even torture this prick for the next mile? Nothing was going my way at the Komen, except for the fact that I was one of the cancer free people I guess. So the last mile was ran in solitude, sans Komen nemesis. The last mile featured tons of bikers on High Street that were honking and reving their engines which was pretty sweet. I finished the race and figured I'd turn around and run counter-course and find my mom, who was doing the survivor walk. Uhhhhh, no chance in hell. It turns out trying to find a short person wearing a pink shirt among 1 million other people wearing pink shirts isn't exactly easy. So, it was a bummer I couldn't find her and finish the race with her, but she was understanding of the situation after the race. This race provided race shirt #5 of the year, cotton and pink, but a race shirt nonetheless.

Race Shirt Heaven

2009-05-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

Last post I spun the yarn concerning my trip to Shitsburgh, PA for the half marathon a few weeks ago. I ran out of space before I got to say that the shirt from the event was top shelf, nice moisture wicking material, good sizing, and not gaudy to look at. The only problem is that it's black, which isn't optimal for summer workouts, but oh well. And actually, I somehow managed to get two (2) shirts out of the deal, compared to everybody elses 1 shirt. When we went to the marathon expo to pick up our packets I was handed a bag that had the official race shirt as well as a yellow Nike Dri-Fit shirt as well. When I saw it was an XL (I ordered a L upon registering), I asked my friends what size there yellow shirt was. The only problem was...I was the only person that got one. Apparently there was a mix up and I was given a bag with a shirt that someone had used to put a shirt they had purchased in. At no point in time did I remotely consider taking the free $40 shirt back, this represents reason #10,471 why I'm going to hell. We'll consider the yellow shirt to be shirt #3 of the racing season.

Another thing about Shitsburgh was the bag check on race day. FedEx was one of the sponsors of the race so they had a few package delivery trucks there where you could check a bag while you ran the race. When my friend and I got there we took the bag there assuming it would be there when the race was over, this was not the case. At the end of the race (sweaty, cold, hungary, etc.) we went to get our stuff only to find out they had moved the trucks to a location that was completely impossible to get to. To make a long story short, by the time we managed to get to the trucks and actually get our bag about an hour had passed. They're lucky I didn't catch a cold, a lawsuit would have been in order. But, this did give me a great idea for future races to score tons of free stuff. Buy a few shitty delivery trucks that remotely resemble FedEx delivery trucks, paint them white and make some big FedEx stickers for the sides. Next, drive to a race and set up a
'bag check' and put people's bags in your trucks. After the start of the race, drive off with everyones shit. Boom, the perfect crime. Nobody will know what happened for well over and hour, and by then I'll be long gone. How you like that Danny Ocean?

Fast forward to last Saturday and race shirt #4 from the Springboro YMCA sprint triathlon. We got up ass early to drive over to Dayton so we could be there by 7am to prepare for the 8am start. The swim was inside the Y's pool and was guaranteed to be massive chaos, people going in every 3 seconds, swimming a lap, going under a lane seperator, repeat til at the end of pool. It was like a massive fucking mosh pit, not to mention we had to stand outside half naked in the windy cold for 20 minutes. The swim was mainly ruined by people who needed to stroke their own egos by starting near the end of the line and pass slower swimmers like me, instead of starting near the front where they belong. What a bunch of jerks, I don't even want to talk about it, their lack of sportsmanship bothers me so much. There's no need to ruin my swim just to make yourself feel better dick head, I can't wait to pass your ass on the bike or run. I did the swim in 7:45 which was good for 180th place out of 232 people, yowza! That sucked! Oh well, time to regroup and hit the bike, which was to be my big comeback. I went out like gangbusters and rode hard, passing a lot of people. The odd thing about a triathlon of this format is you don't really know who you're racing because you didn't start at the same time as everyone else. So, if you're even on the course with someone, the person who started after the other in the swim is actually ahead according to the clock. I was making hay bigtime on the bike, did that part in 33:27 which was good for 52nd place during the bike portion, now we're talking.

Time for the 5k run, this should be my time. I popped an energy gel during transition #2 in preperation for the short run, I had never actually run a 5k so figured it would be pretty easy. But, it was also the first time I had biked super hard then attempted to run immediately afterwards so my legs were a bit tired, combined with the fact that I had just busted ass 7 days prior in the half marathon and this could have been some of the hardest 3.1 miles I've ever done! Did the first mile in 8:10, mile 2 had a massive, and I mean MASSIVE downhill, with an immediate turnaround and return trip up Mount Springboro. Did mile 2 in 7:40ish, my watch took a crap which sucked. R.I.P. Ironman watch, ironically it never lived to see me do an Ironman event. I'm not sure what mile 3 was but I was moving pretty good, total run time 24:09, good for 54th place of all runners. Overall time (including the 2 transition areas) 1:08:26, 66th place overall. Eventhough the swim was chaotic and it psyched me out, the event was still fun and I think I did really well for my first tri. I definately look forward to doing another one in the near future. The next planned one is an olympic distance event at Antrim Park in July, which is a 1.5k swim, 40k bike, and 10k run. And, not only was the event fun, but the shirt was high quality as well. I'm not sure, but I'm going to check the message boards to see if I can get an Ironman tattoo or sticker for my car since I've done a tri. If anyone knows the rules about this, let me know.

The Quest for Shirts

2009-05-10T18:03:00.000-07:00

Race season is officially upon us and I'm pretty hell bent on collecting as many race shirts as possible as long as it doesn't put my personal health at risk, or enact my overdraft protection. This year is a first for me as I'm not traveling for work and I am actually able to come up with a race schedule and proper training plan. Since I started the whole physical fitness thing I've never been able to plan more than a few weeks in advance so this year looks to be a nice change, and as results suggest so far, it appears to be a positive change. A little more than a month ago I ran my first half marathon in Xenia, and had registered for the Pittsburgh Half Marathon last weekend which was sponsored by Dick's Sporting Goods. Can't the government step in at some point and make them change their name to Bill's or something? Anything but Dick's! What, was Cox Sporting Goods already taken? How about Peter's? I have to assume at some point they've had those odd commercials with interviews of customers who say 'We love Dick's, we buy all our stuff here,' or 'Dick's are the best, we can't get enough,' or perhaps 'Coming inside a Dick's store during a sale is great, I always get more than I bargained for!' It must be great to work in the PR department of Dick's Sporting Goods. Here's a sample conversation for a hypothetical employee:

Person 1- Hey Bill, long time no see. What are you doing now-a-days?

Person 2- Wow, Tony! What are you doing at Chick-Fil-A? I'm doing good thanks. I work in the PR department at Dick's Sporting Goods.

P1- That's great, so you tell everyone how great Dick's are?

P2- Wow, that's pretty fucking original. I've never heard that one before you homophobe. I hope you choke on your Chick-Fil-A, you asshole.

P1- Hey, don't take out your anger on me cause you love Dick's man. How are the wife and kids doing?

P2- Actually, I got divorced cause my wife was cheating on me. Somehow she got custody of the kids too. Didn't you already know that? That happened a while ago.

P1- Yeah, I did. I just wanted to bring it up again. Take care man, good luck in spreading the word about Dick's!

p2- (collapses to the floor crying)

The moral of the story is everyone at the race had a black sack that said Dick's real big on it, awesome. The day before the race was one of the longest few hours of my life though as we had gotten to Pitt early so we could pick up our race packets, and had a lot of time to waste throughout the day before needing to go to bed to get some proper pre-race sleep. I stayed with a high school friend who luckily lives near 3000 bars, and since I was fully prepared to bust ass the following morning while running 13.1 miles, I had no intention of drinking. Another great thing was that it was damn near perfect drinking weather and the Kentucky Derby was on, as well as Bull-Celtics game 7. To top it off, one of my friend's buddies showed up and at one point offered us $100 to drink with him. These are the moments when you decide how serious of a racer you are. It was by far the longest amount of time I've ever spent at a bar without drinking. The old me would have caved for $20, but I held strong and only ended up having 2 beers at our mega-dinner at Buca diBeppo, which I was fine with. Beer has carbs, and carbs are good for endurance events.

Waking up for a 7am start didn't prove too difficult and we were at the event in plenty of time to check a bag/warm-up/etc. The race had around 10,000 entrants, so it was by far the biggest race I've ever participated in which was cool. The race had a good vibe too, the city hadn't had one for the previous 5 years so it was the big return, and the city seemed fairly excited to have it. My goal was to start out faster than I had at Xenia, then cruise from there, my main goal was to break into the 1:30's and finish in the top 20% of the half marathon field. They had pace groups which I'd never seen either so I got near one of those with the expectation of hanging it with for a while before speeding up. At race start I was feeling good and ready to put in a good effort, the weather was perfect, nice and cool, overcast with no sun. Mile 1 was 7:33 (roughly 45 seconds faster than mile 1 at Xenia), mile 2 was 7:38 (about 20 seconds faster), then mile 3 was 7:05 (about 40 seconds faster), so after 3 miles I was 1:45 ahead of my previous best. This was far faster than I was hoping but was still feeling good and breathing alright. I jobbed out miles 4-7 in good time 7:18, 7:23, 7:24, 7:27, really consistant, over halfway home and looking good. Total time to mile 7, 52:32. Mile 8 went through a neighborhood with a few hills and I started to feel fatigue set it, the plan was to take my energy gel at the end of mile 8 anyway so this seemed fine, to take the gel I had to slow a bit which produced the slowest mile of the race @ 7:48. Mile 9 was 7:30, then mile 10 I crashed, going out so fast had taken it's toll and I was starting to feel it, the gel didn't prove to be much help. But, while I felt terrible and thought I was going slow, the watch said otherwise, mile 10 in 7:42, not too bad. At this point I was really struggling and the finish line couldn't come soon enough, I was convinced I did mile 11 in 8:30, Mr. Ironman watch corrected me, 7:48. I also felt slow because a few people started passing me, which I hate. More pain and suffering in mile 12, 7:37, 1.1 to go, feet don't fail me now. Normally, I'd kick pretty good the last mile (@ Xenia mile 13 was my fastest mile @ 7:18), here...no such luck. Some dbag little kid passed me at some point and I was about ready to punch him, there's no way this punk had run the previous 12 miles! Mile 13 was 7:46, then I sprinted the last tenth in 45.74 seconds. Total time- 1:38:49. I was pretty wrecked after the race but was happy with the good PR. The results proved odd though, at Xenia (which apparently is one of the most competitive races in the country) I ran 2 minutes slower than this time and finished in the top 21% of half marathoners. Here, out of 4105 1/2er's I was 182nd, top 4.43%! Strange, must not have been a very competitive field, but I'll take it! Out of 1675 men, I was 145th (top 8.66%). And age group, I was 19 out of 275, for top 6.91%.

Overall, the race was fun....hard, but fun. The course was good, and I think it sets up to run a fast time. The event was very well organized and I would encourage anyone to do it next year, I'm sure the race will only get bigger (if the organizers increase the field, they had to cap it this year cause so many people registered). And I'm definately super happy with the result. It was good to realize I felt so bad but still ran good times, that will help out big time in future races when I feel like crap. Really nice race shirt too! Shirt #2 of the season! I'll try to get out the epic tale of shirt #3 from yesterday in the upcoming week!

BB vs. iPhone

2009-04-27T09:15:00.000-07:00

As I described yesterday, I got a Blackberry Curve 8330 last week as I look to expand my cell phone horizons. I still think the iPhone is the way to go, but the BB has some strong aspects as well. After 6 days with the BB I like it and could see myself keeping it if need be. It definitely does everything I want, possibly just not on the same level that the iPhone could. The main thing that I think I like compared to the iPhone is the fact that it has an actual keyboard and not that touch screen mumbo jumbo. I thuroughly enjoy texting and emailing and I can see myself getting discouraged with a touch screen cause I hate trying to pinpoint those little buttons on the screen with my finger tip. That isn't to say the BB is perfect, the buttons are pretty small and I find myself mistyping quite a bit, which for a texting perfectionist like myself is bad. I take pride in my texting spelling, puncuation, etc and want a phone that makes it as easy as possible for me to get things 100% right the first time. I think the first time I would try to type a long message on the iPhone I'd probably consider chucking it through the window cause it took so long. I'm sure it's something you get used to, and apparently the device acclimates itself to your typing style as well to help out. But, I still like the tried and true method of typing with the buttons, call me old fashioned.

The big thing that the iPhone pushes is it's AppStore. I would assume that the iPhone is the undisputed king in this category cause while I browse the Verizon and BB app stores, the selection is pretty slim for most things. There seem to be a lot of similar applications, yet none of them seem to be significantly better than any of the others. A good one that I've found and would recommend to everyone with a BB is called Poynt (go to BB App Zone, or www.poynt.com). It's one of those nav/business/movie type of apps, except it functions very well while looking pretty slick too. You can do just about anything, search for whatever, wherever, whenever. You can find movie times and even buy tickets through it which is kind of cool, and you can integrate it with Google maps if you've downloaded that (which you should, BB maps is amateur hour). It's free, and way better than paying $9.99/month for VZ Navigator (if you have Verizon). I gave Poynt 5 out of 5 stars and even sent in a review cause I liked it so much. A good weather app to get is from The Weather Network, it's free as well. As you scroll over it's icon on the phone it shows the current weather conditions, and the icon itself is a representation of whats currently happening which is cool. Not that I need animated raindrops to tell me it's raining outside, but I appreciate the effort. It has a nice current, short term, and long term forecast in a better format than Weather Channel mobile so that's why I dig it. As for sports apps, I've gotten ESPN and FoxSports but am not sure if one is really better than the other. ESPN is solid as you'd expect and I'd imagine I'll use it, especially come fantasy football season since that is the site my leagues are with. One app I would recommend not getting is called Viigo, it claims to be a jack of all trades in terms of news, sports, weather, etc, but doesn't seem to be very good at any one thing. It does have a flight search (which would be nice) and is on the verge of getting audio/podcasts which is the main reason I got it, hopefully they get that capability sooner rather than later.

I think the main things that will sway me to the iPhone will be the ability to use iTunes and all the good apps. Having tunes and podcasts on there would be nice. And the active GPS w/ Google maps is awesome when driving somewhere that you don't know where you're going. Also, the touch screen comes in handy here cause you can just slide your finger to move the map, rather than having to move the trackball and waiting forever for the map to readjust. Plus, I think there's an app that integrates the GPS with running/biking so you can track your workouts and possibly integrate them with your Nike+. That seems pretty cool, and since you have iTunes on there, you can take it with you on your workouts and it serves a dual function. While the BB does have GPS, there don't appear to be any apps that use it for this purpose. And I'd imagine there's some kind of iPhone porn app, does anything else really matter? No.

I'm not sure if the iPhone does this, but the BB integrates your Facebook friends with your contacts to put their FB pics on their contact info. Its funny to look up someone in your contacts and see their FB profile pic, that's pretty cool. I'd imagine FB for iPhone does this as well so it's a push. I like FB mobile as a whole, I'm interested to see the differences on the iPhone. So overall, I like the BB, I definately don't dislike it for any reason. I think the iPhone might just be a touch better. Everyone I know that has an iPhone says they love it and wouldn't trade it for anything, and from some of my weird friends, that's a big compliment. Even people I know that are scared of phones, computers, technology like it, so that's saying a lot.

The Blacker the Berry...

2009-04-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

This picture doesn't have anything to do with this post but I saw it and thought I needed to share it with the rest of the world. I found it through God's Twitter page. Yes, God is on Twitter. I still don't understand Twitter, but God's Twitter feed is kind of funny, and I'm sure he knows who follows his feed so when I die he should hook me up, so I've got that going for me.

Last week I wrote part 1 of Saturday's events in Bowling Green with the thought of it being a grand 2 part blog with tons of hilarity. I meant to write part 2 on Tuesday but I ended up getting busy and never had the chance to write it and do it justice. As the week passed I've lost a little steam over what transpired so I'll give you a shorter account. Just to refresh your memory, part 1 ended with us ordering Myle's pizza at the bar while getting sloshed. Soooo...while at the bar, this girl who a friend used to hook up with in college showed up out of nowhere which was crazy, what are the odds? It's funny cause her nickname is 'Lawnmower Toes Amy' cause she's missing a few toes due to a tragic lawnmower accident as a child. After everyone got back from the dinner, we hit the carryout to grab some brews and went with some undergrads to one of their off campus houses. I went classy and got a 30 pack of Natural Ice, I didn't realize they still made the stuff, I thought it got outlawed cause it was making kids go blind. We didn't stay there long before heading to the Brathaus downtown. Things were getting hazy here and I don't remember anything particularly interesting happening. At bar close we went back to the house w/ all of our beer where we met an undergrad who felt the need to bump his gums to us about how we were old and couldn't drink anymore.

Bad idea son. After realizing I wasn't backing down from his challenge he tried to puss out and get a proxy to take his place in the beer bong challenge I set up. Whatever, I crushed the other kid too. Point is, you fuck with the bull, you get the horns. I'm pretty sure I ruined this kids life. Looking back, I probably could have cut the kid some slack. Nahhhh nevermind, he needed a lesson taught to him.

In other big news this week, I got a Blackberry this week. I'm debating whether or not to get an iPhone or something else, but either way I know I need to get a phone w/ email/internet/etc. My regular douche phone just isn't holding my interest anymore. I went to Verizon (my current carrier) to check out their selection of phones, and as it turns out most of their phones horrendously blow. The only decent option is the Blackberry Curve, the BB Storm is an abomination. After that, I went to the AT&T store and checked out the iPhone...game over. iPhone is the way to go, but...I still have time left on my Verizon deal and it will cost me $85 to get out of my contract early. It's nice though, through my new employer we get 20% off of monthly plans at AT&T, and 22% off at Verizon, so that's super sweet. With news of a possible new iPhone coming out in a few months I decided not to plunk down the $200 for the phone plus the early termination fee w/ Verizon, so I could wait to see what Apple does with the new product. It seems as if it isn't actually a new phone, it is merely an HD input/output cable and new OS (which is free to download) for the current phone. Also, next year the iPhone exclusivity contract w/ AT&T expires and all carriers will be able to carry the phone. See, I bet you didn't think of this as your go to tech blog did you? I still think AT&T's 3G network is the hot ticket though. The BB is pretty cool though, it's definately a huge step up from what I had. Plus, I'm probably just going to take it back in a month anyway (I can take it back w/o financial reprocussion w/in 30 days). I'm sure I'll write more about it in my next post, I've been familiarizing myself with it over the past 5 days and have gotten over the initial learning curve I think so I'm just hitting my stride.

We're Going to be Pigs!

2009-04-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

This post isn't about European Vacation, but while I was searching the interweb for a picture from the Pig in a Poke scene, I stumbled upon this pic which has the Griswald's name misspelled. They're name is actually spelled 'Griswold.' I had never noticed that before, I'm sure as most of us guys watched this movie we were probably focusing on our dirty thoughts towards Beverly D'Angelo, and not on the spelling of their name. Come to think of it, that movie has some funny parts and I haven't seen it in a while. It might be worth Netflix-ing at some point. In other misspelling news, the other day the Washington Nationals sported jerseys with their name spelled 'Natinals.' Genius! Or maybe budget cutbacks due to the poor economy meant they couldn't afford all the letters, and their management figured a missing 'o' wouldn't prevent people from figuring out what team was actually on the field. If I ran the Nats, I think I'd just let our players wear t-shirts during the games, I wouldn't even care if they were matching or not. The Nats are like...well...they're like the Nationals of MLB. I think even the Pirates look at them like a joke. And speaking of baseball, is it necessary for ESPN to have Power Rankings after the first four games of the season? Hey ESPN, the teams have played 4 f'n games and they still have 2000 more to go, can we give the power rankings a rest until we've seen the teams go through their rotation 2 or 3 times? Thanks. It's amazing how much I simultaneously love and hate The Worldwide Leader.

Onto the point of this blog and the reason for the European Vaction pic, this weekend was my fraternities spring grad event formally known as Pig Dinner (for info about the history of Pig Dinner click here). A great week of Facebook terrorism had me pumped to get into town and see a bunch of old friends. From what I had heard, they were expecting a good crowd, and I knew most of my good friends were going to be there so the liklihood for a blood bath was high, but, how much damage can you do in one night? HA. I had to work Saturday morning, but was able to make it up to BG by 5:30 to get involved in the festivities. I got into town and went straight to the bar where everyone was, I was primed to get wasted for numerous reasons: 1- whenever I'm with my friends we always get plastered and tons of funny shit happens, and 2- I haven't been drinking that much recently and the possibility of tying one on sounded good, between working 2 jobs and tons of training I think I deserve it. Upon getting to the bar I was mainly hearing 2 comments from people: how skinny I look and how many people read and like the blog. It was kind of weird being told by so many guys that I looked good, it was like I never left the Short North! The comments are much appreciated though and it's nice of people to notice the work I'm putting in and to make nice, genuine, and positive statements to me about it. No doubt, if you're last mental image of me was from my days at Bowling Green, I doubt you could even recognize me if I didn't come up and shake your hand. I wish I still had Ruhl's pic from our graduation when me, him, and Hoynes each weighed about 250. Jesus, that picture is hilarious and sad all at the same time. If we ever ask why we didn't get more attention from ladies in school, all we need to do is look at that picture and the question is answered.

All the comments about how everyone likes the blog was nice to hear as well. I was convinced I had about 7 friends, but apparently a lot of people are reading this and recommending it to others. Actually, the total hits on the page are roughly approaching 1000 which is good. At my previous projections of the '7 friends' business model, I figured it would take until roughly 2053 to reach 1000 site hits. We're getting close to that in about 4 months, thanks for the support. So, while most people left the bar to go to the formal dinner, some of us had planned just to stay in BG and hang out, and hang out we did. While playing cornhole in the bar, we were consuming some serious amounts of beer, and even got so lazy that we had pizza delievered to Muggs. This was actually the low point for the night as I had my mind set on going to Myle's and chowing down, and I only ended up eating 3 pieces which was disappointing. But, some Myle's is better than none, and hanging out with 4 other first ballot Hall of Famer's is more important than pizza. This is getting long so I'll conclude part 1 of the night for now, the best is yet to come it part 2 tomorrow!

When Harry Met Rally

2009-04-12T18:48:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not have heard, the world's economy is in a bit of a downturn right now. People are loosing their jobs at unprecedented rates and the lifestyle that most of us have come to take for granted over the past few years has gone by the wayside. While this bear market has produced many negatives for a lot of people, a few positives have come out of it. Subway has all footlong subs for $5 and Quiznos has some subs for $4, at the end of the day I think this is what will define this era, The Great Sub War. This time has forced many people to adjust their spending habits and become more resilient . I think as a whole the general population is trying to make the best of a bad situation and is maintaining reasonably high spirits in spite of the poor economic conditions. Americans are showing their true spirit and doing everything they can to support their fellow citizen who may be in need, this is no more true than in the case of General Motors. While some people are saving pennies and still managing to donate their time, food, clothes, etc, to those less fortunate, GM is taking the unprecedented step to ask Americans to 'put their rally caps on.' Get inspired by watching the commercial...

(pause)

Hmmmm, put my rally cap on? Are they being serious? I think they are. I almost wrecked my car the first time I heard the radio commercial for this appeal to the population. Then, I almost jumped through the roof of my house after seeing the tv commercial asking the same thing. Sooooooo, let me get this straight...GM is seeking $24 billion in bailout money from the government to support their sorry asses, and they want me to put my rally cap on? How out of touch can these people be? You put your rally cap on when your baseball team is down 2 runs heading into the bottom half of the last inning, not when you're asking Uncle Sam for a cool $24 billion. Let me try to describe the sports scenario equivalent of the situation GM is in right now....oh wait, THERE ISN'T ONE BECAUSE NO FUCKING BASEBALL TEAM HAS EVER ASKED THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT FOR $24 BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS! Even the Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals organizations are looking at General Motors like they're a goddam joke, and rightfully so. The Pirates and Royals are a lot of things, but I've never seen them on Capital Hill begging for money.

And why should we put our rally caps on? Aren't they the ones with one foot in the corporate grave? Heres a hint for the GM wonderkin, why don't you put your fucking rally cap on? Take your own advice and wear your rally cap the next time you head to Washington D.C. to shill for more taxpayer dollars. Maybe the government will appreciate the 'fingers crossed, let's hope for the best' mentality of the rally cap and just give you $50 billion just to tide you over. And while I'm dropping hints to the GM 'braintrust,' why don't you try updating the gauges, dials, radios, buttons, etc., in your cars once every 30-40 years? Have you ever thought that maybe that's why you're in this predicament? Fuck me, if you need a power window button for a 2007 Chevy Malibu, all you need to do is go to a junkyard and grab one out of a 1988 Astrovan. No need to reinvent your model lines once every five years like the Japanese companies, that's just a big waste of R & D money! Around the 12 second mark of that commercial, it says 'we need to start thinking differently.' Really? No shit? You're only about 3 decades and $24 billion late on that call buddy. Oh well, who needs technology and innovation when we have rally caps? They'll save the day!

I may not be in the best financial situation I've ever been in but I'm working and staying afloat which is fine, life has its ups and downs and this is just a part of the ride. And it has nothing to do with 'digging in' or 'rallying,' it's called being a normal human being and surviving. Unlike the white collar fat cats who drove GM into the ground, and on some level aided in the current world economic crisis, the overwhelming majority of us don't have the comfort of taking the corporate jet from our cushy northwest Detroit suburb mansions to the nation's capital to panhandle for cash. It's possible there's a lesson to be learned from how GM is handling this current crisis, can we apply the their rally cap theory to all aspects of life? "Good evening sir, this is American Express. Your bill is past due and we'd like a payment." "Well, I'm kind of short right now, but I have my rally cap on! Does that give me an extra month?" or perhaps..."Sir, I have some bad news, your kidneys are shot, you need a transplant." "Well doctor, I presently don't have health insurance cause I was laid off of work from a tier one GM parts supplier." "No problem sir, I just realized you had your rally cap on. We'll take care of it for you, no problem!" I could come up with scenarios like this all day, but I haven't even touched on Chevy's shitty anti-gay Howie Long truck commercials. Not only is GM broke, but they also feel it's important to disperse anti-gay sentiment in their commercials. Sorry for using my Ford 'man step' to make my day easier and save my knees and back Howie, I guess I'll buy a Chevy just so you don't call me a queer. And Howie, wearing wire rimmed glasses and a mock turtleneck don't make you smart, they just make you look smart...big difference douchebag. Here's a good video on how comic book villains are handling the current economic climate...

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm from Jon Hamm

Formal Apology

2009-04-12T06:59:00.000-07:00

In an effort to maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity, Third and Forever is issuing a formal apology to women bikers after our post yesterday. As it turns out a guy I know also wrecked numerous times this week making the score: women wreckers- 3, men wreckers-1. I'm sure the men number will change to at least 2 once I start biking as well, as I attempt to get used to being clipped in to the pedals. I hope this suffices and any feelings of ill will towards Third and Forever recede.

The Boys (and Girls) of summer...and fall

2009-04-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

I'll just apologize to start off, there will not be any pictures of puppies today in the blog. I'm sorry, if you came here thinking of me as your one-stop shop for everything puppyness, you're partially incorrect. We all enjoyed the pictures of little Hank on Monday's post, but some things are best done in moderation. Notice I said 'some things,' alcohol is not one of those things, the more the merrier with booze. Another thing that is best not done in moderation is kicking peoples asses during races. Like booze, the more ass you can kick, the better. I mention this cause the weather is turning nicer and race season is starting to heat up, I'd say it's at a simmer right now, but come next month it will be at a full boil. (I guess I meant that last sentence to pertain to running and tri races, but auto racing is also getting in full swing with the start of Indycar, Formula 1, and ALMS so that is good. At least there are options other than NASCAR on Sunday afternoons now which is outstanding. Last weekend all 4 disciplines had races so it was a veritable racing orgy of sorts which I appreciated. And like an orgy, I had a boner for an extended period of time, I will not confirm or deny if ED drugs were used.)

But, I think most of us that are training for a certain event(s) can now see the finish line (literally and figuratively I guess) and all those indoor workouts over the winter are looking to pay off in the racing arena. As I talk to friends who are training you can tell everyone has spring fever and is itching to see if all the hard work is going to be worth it and take precious minutes off of their times. Last weekend I got the first taste of competition on my tongue, and I'm definately ready for more. With my introduction into triathlons, I've noticed how fun it is to look and talk about tri equipment, mainly bikes. Basically everyone I know has gotten a new bike and it feels like the day after Christmas where we're all calling/emailing each other to talk about our new toy. In running, you don't have this aspect. No one calls each other to talk about their new Brooks Defyance running shoes (which I just got last week, they're really nice). This will be a fun year to hear about everyone's racing experiences, with my exit from auto racing (and lack of travelling) I'll now have the time to focus on racing myself and be a part of the community which will be a good change. The main thing I'm excited about since I'll be doing more races this year is collecting as many race shirts as possible, another case of the more the merrier. I love technical shirts and unlike my collection of hoodies, my tech shirt collection needs some help, after this race season that will change. I plan on doing any and every race that is within 2 hours of Columbus. I'll keep a scoreboard on here to let you know how the collection is coming.

I hope everyone does well this race season and is able to meet/exceed their personal expecations, and is able to stay healthy. On that point, what is it with girl's falling on bikes? 3 girls I know have fallen on their bikes recently, 0 guys have. What's going on here ladies? Seriously, we need to get this figured out! I'm excited to get into tri's and do my first race, I think they'll be a lot of fun. I looked on the web and found out that the average income for a triathlete is $126,000, I'm glad that I can help bring down the mean big time. The next race on my schedule is the Pittsburgh half marathon on Sunday, May 3. I should be able to get into the 1:30's pretty easily I think, but we'll see. 2009 race season stats so far, 1 race, 1 PR, 1 technical shirt.

Enough about racing, at the night job a few days ago I came up with what is widely being considered one of the best nicknames ever. This one black guy wears these matching light brown Dickies shirts and pants to work, eventhough only full time drivers get uniforms (which are possibly brown at the company I work for). He has a matching dark brown set as well and he looks like of funny cause everyone else is dressed so casually. He looks like a zoo keeper, so I nicknamed him Brian Fellow, which was a character portrayed by Tracy Morgan on a Saturday Night Live skit called 'Brian Fellow's Safari Planet.' Here's a clip if you don't remember the skit:

Everybody at work loves this nickname and it's pretty obvious the guy doesn't seem too enthused about it. He looks like a tool though, and I think it's hilarious. All night you can hear people yelling 'FELLOWS!' at him whenever he drives by on his forklift. He'll probably come in and shoot up the joint one of these days, but it's funny in the meantime. And another black guy nicknamed me Birdman, a reference to Larry Bird, cause he said I talked so much trash for a white guy. This is one of the nicest things I've ever heard.

I'm not sure if I'm going to write about LOST tomorrow, our relationship is kind of going through a rocky phase right now so I'm taking a step back. I have quite a few other things I want to write about so I'll probably get another post up tomorrow.

Better Late than Never

2009-04-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, it's been a long time since I last had a proper post on the blog. But, can you really stay angry with me after seeing the picture of the cute puppy up there? I mean, look how cute he is! And I posted it, so by basic transitive property you shouldn't be the least bit angry with me. Let's walk through this...if you aren't a commie and you like puppies, and I post a picture of a cute puppy, then you should like me...pretty simple. So let's forget about the lack of posts the past 3 weeks and focus on the important stuff, like Hank the golden retriever puppy from the 1/2 marathon I did Sunday. Did I mention how cute he is? Doesn't Hank rock? And, isn't that a great dog name, Hank? Yes, yes, and yes! Oddly enough, I didn't actually get to meet or photograph Hank, I was running at the time of his presence at the race, so all I have are these pics to preserve his legacy. Here's another one, I just can't help it! That's two (2) puppy pictures, I could write anything from this point forward and no one should care!
I wish I could say I haven't had any posts recently because I was busy partying it up with my boys Lance Armstrong or P.Diddy, but sadly that isn't the case. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Instead of living the high life of rich socialites I've been working two jobs and training in every spare moment in between. I used to travel all over the world on someone else's dime and was on ESPN or ABC 20+ times a year. Now, I have the potential of working 70 hours a week while making less money than when I used to have 1 racing job, good times. My days basically consist of 4 things: sleeping, eating, working, and training....seriously. And looking at Facebook. To be honest, I don't mind the working, I just mind how it cuts into my ability to train how and when I want.

Unfortunately, until I can go full time as a driver for a certain parcel service that my second job is at, I'm forced to keep my shitty day job with the white trash losers, which is what I'm really upset about. With my night hours at the parcel service, which functions internationally, I'll just call it IPS, I'm actually gaining a new found respect for my dvr. I'm actually forced to use it again for the first time in a while, and I now have a new found love for it. The second job is also at night which has somewhat cut into my texting, which is my lifeline. At IPS I work Tuesday thru Friday 6pm to 12am'ish, which are prime texting hours (they have a no cell phones policy in the building, but as I've noticed as I work there longer, no one really gives a shit about this policy, or very many other things for that matter). So, hopefully I can go full time at IPS sooner rather than later for numerous reasons which include but aren't limited to: more sleep, less white trash people, better/more consistant training, more money, better health benefits, and all the brown pants/shorts I could ever hope for. Pray for me.

A few good things have happened since we last talked. First, I got that new job at IPS. It's not the best right now, but has the potential to be absolutely outstanding, in a relatively short time period as well. They have a great tuition reimbursement program which is one of the things I'm most exicted about. The sooner I can get a real degree and move my pathetic psychology/sociology degree to the background, the better. Second, I got a cool road bike. I got it from an OSU student the day before he was leaving for spring break. I had talked to him about it for about a week and a half prior but figured he'd be more desperate for cash as spring break neared so I wasn't returning his calls or emails right away. The last Friday of OSU finals I called and gave him a ridiculous offer which he seemed pretty excited to receive. He got vacation & beer money, and I got a sweet bike at a great price, it was a win-win situation. God bless craigslist and broke college kids. If you're a bike dork and want the specs send me an email or check out Fuji's website. Here's a pic...

Third, I completely blew away my expectations at the 1/2 marathon I ran yesterday. While it was the first official 1/2 I've run competitively, I'd say I've been physically and mentally prepared to run one for a while but haven't for different reasons (injury, scheduling, etc). I was incredibly anxious to finally do one and see how I'd do in a competitive environment. My stated goal for the race was 1:45 which is basically 8:00 pace, I would have been fine with running this time. I started out the first mile at 8:15 and felt good, my first mile is always my slowest, it's possible I over-compensate for trying not to come out too fast by going a little convervatively. Mile 2 was 7:55, now we're talking, still feeling strong and breathing is good. Mile 3 came with some hills which I like, started passing people and the competitive juices were flowing...7:45. Mile 4 started a long stretch on an arrow straight fairly flat paved bike path, getting splits during the next while was hard cause mile markers were non-descript, miles 4,5, and 6 were done in 22:20 (7:27 pace), miles 7 & 8 in 15:21 (7:40). The turnaround was at mile 8 and started us on a mile trip dead into a headwind which was discouraging, I felt good til I hit this point, luckily I brought an energy gel which I took at the mile 9 aid station, miles 9 and 10 done in 15:52 (7:56, uh oh, creeping back up towards 8!). The gel kicked in and I jobbed mile 11 in 7:35, only 2 miles left, we're almost home free! A guy with a Garmin 305 w/ GPS caught me at this point and was trucking, as we passed he said keep up the good work and said we only had 2 miles left. We exchanged a few out of breath sentences and I decided I had to try to keep up with him, we did mile 12 in 7:42. Mile 13 we caught a guy who was walking and encouraged him to finish with us, the poor guy ran about 50 yards and proceeded to stop and puke, awesome! Mile 13 = 7:19, the fastest of the day. Race total: 13.1 miles, 1 hour 40 minutes 45 seconds, 7:42 pace, 95th out of 444 half marathoners (top 22%). I'm still psyched today, I'm surprised I haven't broken my arm/shoulder while patting myself on the back the past 36 hours, but what can I say? Sometimes we do things that we're proud of ourselves for, and this was one of those things for me. A la Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights after his Panthers lost in the state championship game, I left my shoes at the finish line, Xenia Forever...

April Fools Blog

2009-04-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

April Fools!!!!! Buhahahahahahahaha!!!

But seriously, check out this link for the great new song by the band Carolina Liar, 'Show Me What I'm Looking For'

Mo Tweeting, Mo Problems

2009-03-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

I have to be honest when I say the main reason I look at Twitter is because of Bad Boy Records CEO Sean Combs (Twitter @iamdiddy). When you look at the picture to the left, how could you not be interested in knowing what he's doing at any point of the day? It's a guarantee that whatever he's doing, it's way cooler than what you or I am doing. I would like to see a pie chart of how Diddy's days are spent, I'm guessing there aren't that many categories of things he's doing, but they're probably completely awesome. And even if what he's doing is something like you or I do (like in USWeekly's 'They're just like us!' section), he's still doing it with way cooler shit. Like if he's surfing the internet for porn, you know it's on a Diddy edition solid gold 19" Macbook Pro. You're probably saying, 'Brandon, Apple doesn't make a 19" Macbook Pro.' I know they tell the general public they don't, but I bet they build them special just for Diddy. And when he's texting hos on his cell phone, it's no doubt on a diamond encrusted Titanium Blackberry that has a Cristal application that shoots Cristal out of a special Diddy edition bluetooth headset into his mouth. Back to the Diddy pie chart...I'd say the major categories represented (with corresponding color, cause it's a pie chart and you need colors) are: riding in my Bentley/personal jet/yacht (canary blue), throwing hundred dollar bills at strippers (hunter green), throwing hundred dollar bills at strippers while in my Bentley/personal jet/yacht (burnt orange), drinking Cristal (yellow), hangin wit his peeps (red), and handling Bad Boy/Sean John bidness (gray). Actually, I'm very interested to see Diddy's pie chart now, I'm very uninterested in seeing mine. The only categories that would probably be involved are: tri training, sleeping, and thinking about what to get for lunch. Sadly, that's about it.

I only actually know 2 people on Twitter, besides that it's all celebs of varying degrees. Diddy is easily the best person to follow, his tweets are off the charts. I'm convinced he's a fucking vampire cause he only tweets at night, during the day I'm sure he's just resting his loins after a hard night of doing....stuff. Pretty much all of his tweets are incredibly positive and uplifting, his energy is unrivaled in the interweb. A basic Diddy tweet consists 3 things: 1- ALL CAPS AND LOTS OF EXCLAMTION POINTS!!! 2- trying to get people to do something he wants to do. And 3- a charge to his followers to get up and go. Here's an example: 'CMON PEOPLE!!! PTWITTY IS UP AND ON THE AIR AT 6AM!! HOW YALL FEELIN? LETS GO!' He's hilarious, he was out of the twitterverse yesterday but came back with a vengence today, here are a few of his tweets to wet your palate:

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER!!!...IM BACK!!!...LETS GO PEOPLE!!!

+++++++++++++++++++++ENERGY!!!!!! take that!+take that+TAKE THAT!!!

I NEED YALL TO LIFT UP YOUR ENERGY PEOPLE!!!!! LETS CHANGE THE WORLD!!! LETS GO!!!!!

Ptwitty question of the day: ARE YALL READY TO DANCE???!!!

As you can tell, it's hilarious. Diddy provides some great fodder for me and my 2 Twitter friends. And, UFC announcer/comedian Joe Rogan commented on Diddy's awesomeness on his feed yesterday. It's obvious the whole world is catching on.

living in harmo-knee

2009-03-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

it's been 5 days since my last post, and i don't really have a full topic i need to touch on but I feel the need to clear my mental pipes of the stuff that's accumulated over the past few days.

- my buddy Ted Haynes (name has been changed to protect his true identity) was in town Friday night for the state high school wrestling tournament and we met at Buffalo Wild Wings for some drinks. a girl I knew from college brought a friend and met us so that was fun, they left early though cause she's a gymnastics coach and had to be ready for the individual portion of the gymnastics tournament that was also in town. Ted and I ended up staying at BW3 til they were dragging us out while our fingertips dragged across the hardwood floors. Luckily, the hotel he was staying at had a fridge in the lobby with shitty frozen pizzas and cans of Bud Select. the lady was nice enough to sell us some beers, god knows we needed them....fast forward to Ted poring out 11oz of each can later that morning. we stayed up til 330am pseudo-drinking in the parking lot and shooting the shit, good times. this represents 1 of 3 times in my life i've been to a BW3 and didn't order any food, history was made.

- luckily, i had one of the worst hangover headaches i've ever experienced on saturday morning. after cruising home to grab a quick nap and get my gear for swim practice, it was off to the pool. i felt terrible and was in no condition to properly attack the lesson in typical deagle-gusto fashion. after 200 yards the teacher asked me if i was going to yack in the pool, that's not a good sign. fortunately for me, our teacher was a big talker and we didn't necessarily spend the whole hour swimming. he was a good teacher though, he actually got in the water and swam with us. he was really no-nonsense which was nice and helpful. i had a headache all day which was ridiculous, it must have been the draft beers. i later ran 7 miles, then proceeded to slam 5/8 of an extra large Minuteman Pizza.

- sunday, i didn't do anything. literally, i did nothing. well, thats not completely true, i did some dishes and 1 (one) load of laundry. and you know what? i didn't feel the least bit bad about it. tragically, when nothing else is on tv on sundays i get roped into watching nascar, which sucks on principal, but has some really talented drivers which make it worth watching. there was an incident in the race where a gas man for one of the pit crews ran across the pit lane and damn near the track to retreive a tire that rolled away from their pit stall. this was insanely unsafe and incredibly stupid, but hey, were dealing with nascar here, stupidity shouldn't be unexpected. of course this hilljack was the talk of the race and has been all over espn the past few days being chastized for his actions. as a former fueler on pit stops, i couldn't be more embarassed. i would like to feel sorry for the guy but i can't, he must be a moron. if it wasn't for possible negative backlash from the public, the team would have fired him by now. but, with his 4 race suspension by nascar today, firing this retard would simply incite a sympathy campaign for the goof leading to people sending him hundreds of thousands of dollars to put towards his kids college fund and thus, not teaching him a valuable lesson; which is...don't be a retard.

- the weather has been nice recently and luckily this has coincided with my knee feeling better and me being able to run. hopefully, this won't be my down fall. i'd like to ease back into running more than what i have, but it's just not part of my genetic makeup. my first day of running was last wednesday and i did 3 miles (after swimming for an hour), then i ran on thursday and did 4.5 (after biking for an hour). saturday i did 7, with the plan of running on tues, thurs, and sat this week. upon getting to the gym monday night there was only one bike, which was occupied (somehow the other two were 'out of order.' my ass dickheads, it's a fucking bike. can you pedel the fucking thing? oh, yes? then it isn't out of order). so i ended up running 10 miles last night in record time (82 minutes), then did 7 tonight in 57 mins and immediately went to the gym to bike 15 miles. i hate being inside when it's nice out, the weather is supposed to go back to shit tomorrow which will be a blessing indisguise on some level.

- for some reason i've been checking out twitter a lot lately. i only actually know 2 humans on it, but for some reason its kind of fun to check out some of the peoples messages. i have no clue how to describe twitter, what its true function is, or what its purpose in the greater scheme of things is, but its almost kind of interesting. my favorite part is puff daddys tweets, hes hilarious. i sent him a tweet but he didn't tweet me back, i'm still broken up about it. the fact that he refers to himself as p twitty is spectacular. i'm still partial to facebook, but i'm sure in our present state of technological society, FB will grow to large for its own good soon and our information seeking carnivorous pack will migrate to the next best thing, leaving FB's bloody remains on the interweb prairie.

- no LOST tomorrow but i still might post a few thoughts about recent events. for the return next week I'm planning a big format change to the episode blog which I think will be most enjoyable for all!

LaFleur

2009-03-05T20:30:00.000-08:00

If you were hoping to see a picture of Dhani Jones for the third post in a row then I hate to disappoint you but there will be no such image added to this post. But I will post this link to a picture of #55 straight pimpin. Today, I was asked by someone if I had a man-crush on Jones. The answer to that is no. While he is no doubt very interesting and probably a pretty cool guy, I only have room in my heart for one guy now, and that guy is Lance Armstrong (here's a picture of him messaging me again on Facebook. He likes to keep me updated on things when he's on the road, but enough is enough Lance, there's work to be done!). For some reason right now I'm completely and utterly fascinated with everything Lance, Livestrong, and The Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF). I haven't been able to determine if I'm presently looking for a road bike because of my infatuation with LA or if I'm presently infatuated with LA because I'm looking at road bikes. Either way I'm hooked, I think subscribing to the Twitter feed of the LAF CEO, Doug Ulman, was the final straw. Those people seem genuinely pumped up to tackle cancer and be at the forfront of the fight. Their world perspective and optimistic approach is nothing short of completely addictive. I think their grassroots movement in the fight against Cancer was, in part, inspiration for the same way Barack Obama ran his presidential campaign. I have no proof or direct parallels between the two, but I think there are definately similarities. The LAF isn't a large organization, but they energize a large group that is more than willing to do the work necessary to organize events, raise funds, educate, heighten awareness, and overcome their experiences with the deadliest disease in the history of man. I encourage everyone to checkout the website for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, there is always interesting stuff to read, watch, and aid with getting involved in the campaign against all forms of cancer.

That being said...onto thoughts on LOST. According to the LOST Twitter feed (I have no clue if it's officially associated with the show or ABC), but they had an interesting tweet today about the name of the episode titled '316' from two weeks ago. The flight number that the episode was named for is based on the Bible (apparently the B in Bible is supposed to be capitalized, I looked it up, the interweb wouldn't lie) story described in John Chapter 3, verse 16. This verse reads: 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' This goes directly to my belief that Locke is Jesus, because as Christian Shephard told him before he left the island, his death would be a sacrifice. It also speaks to what Locke wrote in his suicide note to Jack, 'I wish you would have believed me,' because at the time of writing that letter, he and Jack were natural rivals. At that time Locke thought Jack would never go back, and Jack's lack of belief in the 'man of faith' would ruin the whole plan of getting the Oceanic 6 back to the island, and in turn save the universe. It wasn't until after Locke mentioned Jack's dead father, and Jack's subsequent tailspin involving booze and painkillers, that he realized that Locke was possibly right and that they needed to go back. I'm not religious by any means, but there is some cool shit with some serious religious meanings happening lately. The scene from that same '316' episode with Ben describing the story of St. Thomas the Apostle to Jack was absolutely amazing (which also dealt with the theory of belief, ending with Ben saying 'We all end up believing sooner or later Jack'). Here are the major talking points from this weeks episode 'LaFleur.'

- They finally showed the whole statue that belongs to the partial foot that they've shown before. BUT...BUT...BUT...they didn't show the front of it! They merely showed it from the rear! Whose face is on it? Locke? Jack? I can't wait to see that.

- Michelle Dessler from 24 shows up as the wife of the leader of the Dharma Initiative. They always find interesting ways to work in new characters.

- They finally account for the 3 year time gap between when Locke leaves the island to the time flight 316 crashes there and brings everyone back. At the end of '316' they showed Jin in a Dharma jumpsuit but we had no clue how he ended up being a member over the previous 3 years. The story of how they became accepted by the DI was good and became clear in the mega awesome scene in which...

- While chillaxin in the DI compound, Faraday sees a pre-pubecent Charlotte running around. She had merely died a few hours before and he's been whacked out since. I'm interested to see the scene where he tells her she can never come back to the island once she leaves, as well as learning how they're related.

- Richard Alpert shows up on the Dharma Initiative compound looking pissed and ready to fuck tons of shit up. Earlier in the show, Sawyer and Juliette had killed 2 hostiles, Alpert's people, as they attempted to kidnap Dessler (no clue what her character's name on LOST is, I didn't really pay attention to that). Alpert came to talk to Horace, the Dharma leader, to seek retribution for the breaking of their 'truce.' Sawyer steps up to talk to Alpert and take responsibility for what happened and completely mindfucks ageless Richard in the process. You see, Sawyer knows all kinds of stuff about Richard, but Richard has no clue who Sawyer is. For the first time ever, Alpert is not in a power position and ends up being Sawyer's bitch. He tucks tail and leaves, only partially getting what he wants, while Sawyer is vindicated for Horace earlier saying 'you aren't Dharma material.' Sawyer's actions to preventing war between the DI and the Hostiles earns Sawyer et al. two more weeks in the DI camp while they look for the rest of the people from their 'ship.'

- While Sawyer, Jin, Faraday, and Miles are going to stay for the two weeks, Juliette says she plans to leave on the sub the following day. Sawyer uses his wiley charms to get her to stay and proceeds to bone the hell out of her and get involved in a serious relationship. What bad can come of this? It's not like Kate is coming back to the island...oh...wait...

- Sawyer gets an urgent phone call and leaves Juliette in bed. He meets Jin who has picked up Jack, Hurley, and Kate fucking Austen. Our man James Ford is now in quite the little nugget dilemma isn't he. Good luck with that one champ.

- One of the kids from the Coors Light NFL coaches ads was in a Buffalo Wild Wings ad. I recognized him right away, I have no clue what his name is, nor do I feel like wasting the key strokes necessary to describe which guy in the commercials he is, but he's one of those guys. Good to see he's branched out and hasn't been stereotyped as a 'beer ad only' guy.

No LOST for two weeks, it will be a hard time, but we'll make it. Together, we will make it.

LOST Two-for-Tuesday...errr...Wednesday-

2009-03-04T19:23:00.000-08:00

Before I get to the past 2 episodes of LOST, there's something I need to add to yesterday's post regarding Dhani Jones (here's another picture of him in a bowtie) being considered a renaissance man. Oddly enough, I blog about him yesterday and all of a sudden he's mentioned on Sports Illustrated's website on their pop culture hot list, check that out here. Thanks to SI.com for not citing me at all as the reason for including him on their list. Also, this tag of 'Renaissance Man' for Jones seems to have followed him around since the beginning of time. It's almost like he's a former president or something. Much in the same way that Bill Clinton will always be referred to as 'President Bill Clinton,' it seems that Jones will go through the rest of his natural life as 'Renaissance Man Dhani Jones.' (I stricktly used that example to piss off any possible Republicans that might read this cause they despise Clinton with such a visceral hatred. I could have picked any president but I went with Slick Willy. When Republican parents find out their children are having underage sex, they don't care that the kids are engaging in sex acts, they care about the possibility of the kids ending up like Bill Clinton. No doubt it would suck to raise one of the best presidents in the history of the USA that helped create the biggest budget surplus known to this union. It's probably better off living your life as a repressed gay person who has to have intimate encounters with congressional pages and to raise your kids in the image of a winner like George W. Bu......oh nevermind). And, since he will always have the moniker 'RM' like a president, shouldn't he get a library named after him somewhere? That would truly be fitting of a RM.

Last week's episode of LOST was shockingly tame and didn't end up being nearly as great as what I was hoping for. It was better than the previous weeks episode, but it still lacked any profound glimpses into Locke's greatness. There wasn't really enough going on to make an entertaining running diary out of so here are some of the main points:

- This guy Cesar, who talked to Jack in the airport line while waiting to board the plane to Guam, is destined to become a huge character. His second scene in the show and he's already found an office and is rifling through papers clearly looking for something specific. He obviously works for someone, but who?

- After flight 316 crashes on the island, Locke comes back from the dead. In the exact same manner that Dr. Jack's father is now alive, this is what Elouise Hawking was referring to last week when she said Jack needs a proxy on the flight. As we see later in the episode, it's obvious why Locke loves the island, when on it he regained the ability to walk...as well as the ability to breathe. When off the island, he always seems stricken to a wheel chair for one reason or another.

- After Locke had his leg set and was in the first aid tent, Widmore shows up and they have an awesome interaction in which Widmore explains how they've met before, only 4 days previous on Locke's timeline. C-Dub then tells Locke, "There's a war coming John, and if you're not back on the island, the wrong side is going to win." Good stuff, the war is going to be the epicenter of the story starting in the next few weeks and from here on in. It will be interesting to see how sides are chosen.

- Matthew Abaddon, the black ageless man and Widmore's employee, tell's Locke that he is his driver and that he 'gets people where they want to go.' I found this interesting because he was clearly pushing an agenda while driving Locke around and was a 'driver' in a sense that he drove people to do what he, or more like Widmore, wanted them to do. He implied he was a 'driver' in the literal 'driving you around in a car' sense but it's more of a 'drive you crazy' sense that he can in some way impose his will onto your future actions. This reminded me of a great character on the X-Files (when it was good) called The Pusher, who was able to make people do all kinds of bad shit (namely kill themselves) simply based on his will. That guy was awesomely demonic, he kind of had a modern day Star Wars Force thing going for him.

- Sayid, Kate, and Jack all felt the need to point out to Locke in some way shape or form that he is an old, single, loser who only wants to go back to the island because he has nothing to live for in the real world. Nice people those Oceanic 6.

- In another example of LOST being racist, Matthew Abaddon is shot and possibly killed. I say possibly because he is ageless, so I would find it hard to believe that he's actually dead. Why does he get killed while white ageless man, Richard Alpert, ascends to power on the island as the leader of the hostiles? I think it's fairly obvious whats going on here.

- Technically, Locke didn't commit suicide. Ben strangled him after being told Jin was alive and that Locke knew of Mrs. Hawking. Ben looked somewhat shocked and irked to hear Jin was alive, but upon hearing Locke knew about Hawking he went all Linus on him and strangled his crippled ass. I consider it a moot point though as Locke was on the verge of hanging himself anyway, and the only reason he didn't was cause Ben talked him out of it. And since he ended up being choked in the same room by the exact same electrical chord he was going to hang himself with, I don't feel the need to blame Ben too much for this. I'm working under the pool principal of 'same ball, same pocket' in terms of calling your shot.

This ended up being a little longer that what I expected so I'll write the summary of tonight's episode tomorrow.

Along Came Poly(-math)

2009-03-03T17:36:00.000-08:00

There's a story out there, I'm not sure if you've heard it but it has many ruminations, about a carpenter who gets drunk one night and at some point ends up giving a male friend a blow job. As the story goes, the man goes into work the next day to find out that all of his co-workers have found out about this odd incident and one guy calls him a cocksucker. To this the guy replies, "I've been a woodworker for 20 years and no one has ever called me a carpenter, but I blow 1 guy and all of a sudden I'm a cocksucker." While I could go off on 50,000 different tangents about that hypothetical story, I'm more interested in how people, or in this case, 1 specific person, get their nicknames. The subject for today's post: Cincinnati Bengals linebacker, and former Michigan Wolverine, Dhani Jones.

Me and some friends have had a connection with Jones since his days at Michigan, not because he was particularly the best player, but because of his profile picture on ABC (after considerable internet research I couldn't find the picture :(, and by considerable I mean about 18 seconds worth). In his pic he had kind of a jacked up afro that went straight up and he had this 'I just took a massive bong hit, and liked it' look on his face. It's easily the best profile pic in the history of college football broadcasting. It was this period when Jones was first deemed a 'Renaissance Man' by uber-douche announcer Brent Musburger. At the time I felt it was hard for anyone in college to be considered a Renaissance man (from here on referred to as RM), what does that mean for someone in college? Does it mean you shower frequently and don't eat ramen noodles/generic mac&cheese 4 days a week? Do you have to own your own bow tie company? And how would Musburger be able to figure this out?...like I said, he's an uber-douche! Anyway, the story could have died there...BUT...to this day, Dhani Jones is still considered to be a RM. The question posed to Third & Forever today, how does one become a true RM if so inclined? Good question, lets explore...

First, we should define what a renaissance man is. Besides being a shitty Danny DeVito movie, a RM, or polymath, is simply a person who has achieved mastery of multiple fields or disciplines and who has a very wide base of knowledge. The term RM refers to the Renaissance period in Europe that took place around the year 1450. The main doppleganger associated with this time period is master artist, engineer, and anatomist, Leonardo Da Vinci, whose main popularity comes from the book 'The Da Vinci Code,' which was later turned into a shitty movie, what a tribute. Some famous fictional polymaths listed on Wikipedia's entry on the subject include: Will Hunting, Batman, James Bond, Fox Mulder (from X-Files), and Sam Beckett (from Quantum Leap). Oddly enough, under 'Sporting Polymaths,' Jones is not listed.

Now that we know what a RM is, how do we achieve that label? Step one is picking out a few (I'd say bare minimum 3, but probably more like 4) subjects that you think you can master. Obviously, we aren't spring chickens anymore, and this task would be best suited to partake in starting at a young age, so you should pick subjects you already know (or think you know) a decent bit about. In my case I guess I'd choose boozing, hot wings, 90's video games, and auto racing. Step two, put your junk in that box. Just kidding, that's from the SNL skit 'Dick in a Box,' which is absolutely hilarious. Another great skit by Andy Samberg et al. is 'I'm on a Boat,' which you can check out here. Unfortunately step 2 actually takes a lot of time and requires a lot of learning, which I was hoping I didn't need to do any more of after graduating college with my prestigious degrees in psychology and sociology (click that link and go to the bottom, priceless). I'm not really sure what step 3 is because I don't think a person can deem themselves a Renaissance Man, you need other people to start calling you that. So, I guess you just go around talking to a bunch of people about the things you have a mastery of and hope they take notice? Maybe? Tragically, it's also possible that step 3 involves you having to die. Like most true genious, it probably won't go noticed in this lifetime.

So there you go, that's the gameplan. Sounds like a lot of work. It's possible I'll stick to the phrase "jack of all trades, master of none." Regardless, check out Dhani Jones show starting on the Travel Channel in 2 weeks, it looks pretty cool. Or, if you're into boobs and stuff, check out this show by one of the retarded chicks from E!'s 'Girls Next Door.' That could be interesting as well...if her top falls off...and she doesn't talk.

LOST Crossroads

2009-02-26T19:22:00.000-08:00

I have to be honest when I say that I had modest expectations of the 5th episode LOST, '316.' I'm not bragging but I think I'm pretty good at determining the importance of the upcoming weeks episode by the little trailer they give at the end of the current weeks episode. You know what I'm talking about, when they say "Coming up on next week's Friday Night Lights, Riggins gets loaded and has to make a tough decision regarding Lyla." I'd say that my success rate of predicting the greatness of the upcoming LOST episode based on that 1 minute clip is roughly 97%, it's like my spider-sense. Except in my case, I can't predict when something is bad to happen to people around me, I can merely predict the LOST awesomeness that will take place in one weeks time. So at the end of episode 4 when they showed the '316' snippet, I harbored my enthusiasm as it was made apparent the show would be based on a simple series of events leading in the direction of the Oceanic 6 getting back to the island. This isn't to say that I was unexcited, LOST episodes are like pizza to me, none is bad, just some are better than others.

See, the beauty of LOST isn't in the basic events that take place from episode to episode or season to season. While the stuff that transpires (smoke monster, time travel, heavily armed mercenaries, etc.) on the show is great and generally mindblowing, it is also stuff that could probably be found on any given night on the SciFi channel. The greatness of the series lies in the characters and their history. LOST goes to lengths of defining it's character's identities that no other show has gone to, and that's what makes it truly unique and special. While we knew what kind of cereal Jerry Seinfeld liked and what kind of guys Elaine Bennis was into, Seinfeld never bothered to tell us the story of how Kramer blew up his mother's boyfriend or how Newman was once wheelchair bound and eventually conned by a man claiming to be his father. A lot of tv shows in the past have claimed to be 'character driven,' but in the end it has nothing to do with the actual characters, merely the actors portraying them. LOST is truly a character driven show, which is what made the flashbacks from the first 4 seasons so incredible. As we learned about these people in an impossible situation, we were able to see far past their ability to start a fire or catch a fish, and gain a level of understanding about each individual that isn't common beyond real life. As the series progresses towards it's finale in 2010, we can only hope it doesn't lose sight as to why so many people have a connection with it.

That being said, heres the one sentence summary of episode 5: through some miracle the Oceanic 6 + Ben manage to end up on the same plane that takes them back to the island. Really, that's the gist of it. There were a few noteworthy events that took place, here they are...
- Elouise Hawking tells Desmond that "The island isn't done with you yet." This is major forshadowing that will come more clear later in the episode.
- The scene in the church with Hawking and Jack was outstanding, as was the story of St. Thomas told by Ben to Jack. I can't pick out one or two lines to summarize it, but it was very powerful and prophetic in terms of showing Jack and Locke's importance. Ben tells Jack he has to go tie up 'a loose end.' Translation, someone is going to die.
- Kate came over to Jack's place and proceeded to jump his bones, presumably to get knocked up before heading back to the island so she wouldn't die. Now that it's inevitable she's going to lose baby Aaron, she has no real reason to stay in the real world.
- Ben calls Jack, bloody and out of breath from a boat dock, saying he took care of a promise to an old friend (from last season when he told Widmore he would kill his daughter Penny). It's pretty obvious he's killed Penny and probably little Charlie as well. This goes to what Hawking told Desmond, with his family dead and Ben on the island, Desmond has no real choice but to head back to the island and try to kill Ben.
- For his trip back to the island, Jack decides to wear a suit and tie. Odd choice, I would have gone with shorts, sandals, and some shades. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.
- Clearly something weird is going on because a complete stranger at the airport tells Jack sorry for the loss of his friend, and then the stewardess gives Jack the suicide note after he already tried to get rid of it.
- The pilot of the plane turns out to be Frank Lapidis, the helicopter pilot on the freighter from last year. That was kind of an interesting twist. As Jack and Frank talk, Frank notices virtually everyone on the plane is someone he met on the island, "Wait a second, we're not goin' to Guam are we?" he asks Jack. Well Frank...no you're not.

LOST Episode 4 Diary

2009-02-22T17:45:00.000-08:00

Hopefully, everyone enjoyed the post yesterday about my list of favorite fast food restaurants. Thanks to everyone who sent some kind of correspondence saying they liked it in one way shape or form. It's taken me 32 years of research to develop that list and I'm pretty comfortable with how it turned out. A few people voiced concerns that I was trying to push my opinions onto them when nothing could be farther from the truth, I was merely attempting to start a fast food dialogue for all people to join into. I encourage everyone to create their own list, I think you'll learn a lot about yourself, and in the end...isn't that what life is about? Also, 3 people stated they were displeased with Fazoli's being left off the list. I can't agree or disagree with this point of view because I've never been to one, there's only 1 Fazoli's in Columbus that I know of and it's 15 miles away from my house. If I'm ever in the vicinity I'll stop in and let you know what I think. Let's move on to episode 4 of LOST, 'This Place is Death!' That name just sounds awesome, let's see if the episode can live up. (just a note, I didn't actually write any notes during the original airing of the episode so there isn't the normal time code that you're used to seeing. I could have figured it out while watching the dvr'd version, but I didn't feel like watching the commercials to recreate the true time. I'm sure you understand, if not screw off)

- The show opens with everybody at the dock like at the end of ep. 3. Sun pulls out a gun acting like a hard ass, trying to convince everyone she's going to shoot Benjamin Linus. Bitch please, we all know you aren't going to shoot him! I'm not really sure why this was even a part of the episode since it had -1000% of happening.

- Cut to the beach where the French people are trying to talk to Jin. While using their hands and words don't seem to be cutting it, Rousseau's boyfriend draws a triangle with some lines in the sand and manages to get Jin to figure out hes asking about a radio antenna within 4 seconds. Are Jin and this guy some sort of championship international charades team? How the hell did he figure that out?

- While walking thru the forest, the black smoke monster comes back to mess with the Frenchies. I have to ask, why does the smoke monster have to be black? The nice white polar bear never killed anyone. And look at one of the black castaways, Mr. Eko....a drug dealer. Seeing what I'm getting at here? I'm not saying, i'm just sayin'.

- After killing one of the frogs, the smoke monster grabs some other a-hole and pulls him into a hole by his feet, and his 'friends' decide to grab onto his arm. Hmmm...tug-o-war with the smoke monster? Bad idea jeans homies! I'm not going to say the guy got his f'ing arm ripped off in incredible fashion...oh wait, yes I am...cause that's what happened. Sorry French guy, nice to meet ya. Then his genius friends decide to go into the hole where the smoke monster is to try to save him. Well, they're French, what do you expect?

- A few small things I've noticed: 1- Jin's lips are chapped something fierce, fuck that would hurt. Hopefully the Dharma Initiative has some cherry chapstick stached somewhere. 2- They haven't shown any of these people eating forever. I would be f'n starving! Did the Dharma guys ever open up an Arbys or Quiznos on that damn island? I would be one complaining son of a bitch!

- Rousseau lives out every woman's dream and shoot's her bebe's daddy in the head without repercussion. Apparently, she also capped the only other 2 dudes they were with. This is gonna be some kind of movie on Oxygen channel someday, I can feel it.

- While trying to talk to Jin, Locke asks semi-Asian looking Miles Straume to interpret for Korean Jin, to which Miles responds with the zinger "He's Korean, I'm from Encino." Good stuff.

- Back at the dock in the LBC, Snoop Dogg shows up to help Ben Linus round up the Oceanic 6. HAHA, just kidding, that would be sweet if that happened. And, I wouldn't doubt for a second that Snoop is in Benizzle's Blackberry. Seriously though, Sayid threatens Ben and Jack that if he ever sees them again "It will be very unpleasant for all of us." I'd like to see Sayid torture Jack, that would be great.

- In the forest, Charlotte collapses yet again in an attempt to get attention. Upon waking she has a crazed look in her eye and starts ranting in Korean while peering at Jin. She eventually starts up in english again and tells Jin he can't bring Sun back to the island because "This place is death!" Outstanding scene, I think I'm starting to like Charlotte now, it's too bad she has to die. I might actually be upset at her passing...actually...no I won't. But she deserved to have a cool scene, and now she has. You can go in peace Charlotte, its your time.

- After 2 scene changes we're back to Faraday and Charlotte in the woods where she tells him she's been to the island before and was actually raised there as a child before her mom moved them to England. She tells him a story about how in her youth, a man on the island told her when she leaves she should never come back cause she'll die. "I think that man was you Daniel." Another fabulous scene, that makes 2 for her. That's the final nail in her coffin, they're just pumping her up before her death. This scene opens up a whole can of worms about what the actual relationship is between Faraday and Charlotte. Some people think Faraday is Charlotte's dad, I believe he is her brother and that they have the same mother. Time will tell, but they're definately related somehow.

- Jin gives Locke his wedding ring to show Sun when he finds her after leaving the island. He says that this this will prove to Sun that he is dead. I disagree, all this would prove is that Locke stole your wedding ring at some point.

- Back in the forest, Charlotte (she's now my 41st favorite character, with those 2 good scenes she cracked the top 50!) finally croaks, and it's final too cause they're playing the music from all main characters deaths. Too bad, we'll see what this does to Faraday.

- Cut to Locke in the bottom of the well and Dr. Christian Shephard shows up out of nowhere. I have to say that this guy is the single biggest thing I don't understand about the show. I don't have the slightest inkling about what his role is and why he's around. When we finally learn what his part is in the LOST story, I will be able to sleep better at night, I just don't see what his deal is in the bigger picture. But, as he talks to Locke about his task at hand, he uses the word sacrifice to describe why Locke must die to reunite the Oceanic 6. Oh man, is Locke actually Jesus Christ? The show has been taking on some more religious overtones lately so it's possible. After hearing from Christian that he has to die for the greater good, Locke replies "I'm ready," who like Jesus appears to have an acceptance of his fate. Then, a split second before starting the time leap Christian tells Locke to tell his son he say's hi. Locke responds he has no clue who his son is, the son being Locke's natural rival Dr. Jack Shephard.

- Back at the LBC docks, this time Snoop does show up to help Ben. Psych! Just kidding...again. And actually, they're not at the docks, they're at the church where supposedly Faraday's mom is. For the second time in the episode Ben gets in a battle of semantics, this time with Jack over how he came to meet up with Locke. Earlier he got in a childish argument with Sun over who she thought killed Jin. Ben could have squashed both of these arguments within 1 second but he had to be the smartass and make a comment just to instigate things a little. Nice work buddy, that's the way to get these people to do what you want. Then, just to make things real interesting, my man Desmond shows up.

So to sum up, all the French dudes are dead, Jin could use some chapstick, the LOST creators are racist, Charlotte kicked the bucket, and Locke might be Jesus. Good episode.

Fast Food for Thought

2009-02-21T13:01:00.000-08:00

I'm in a little bit of a blog bind right now as I'm at least one week behind on posting my LOST diary. Week 4 was kind of a bust as I was tired when the show aired and didn't even record my thoughts until re-viewing the episode on dvr some days later, which meant my thought was more of a summary of events rather than the true running diary that you've become accustomed to. I regained my zeal this week and put in the proper effort of doing live recording while the episode aired. I promise you, my faithful readers, I'll do my best to get these up for your consumption. This season of LOST is absolutely insane and it's almost too much information to take in at some points. This past week, while the episode still had tons of good stuff, it was a little more subdued in terms of overall craziness so my amount of notes is somewhat short compared to the previous week. Although, the preview for next weeks episode has me giddy as I feel it could be one of the best episodes of the season. In the season 3 finale, Dr. Jack Shephard said "We have to go back (to the island.)" He's goddamn right, I think it's time.

So, while procrastinating finishing up episodes 4 and 5, I decided to I'd finally address an issue that has been in my notebook since before Christmas, the fast food heirarchy. Obviously, not all fast food joints are created equal and I thought it was my job as a responsible online journalist to address this issue and let the world know what I deem to be the top 10 fast food restaurants, in order from worst to best. The timing of this list is now considered suspect though as Bill Simmons, a writer for ESPN.com, loosely discussed a similar topic on his podcast earlier this week. Simmons has gone out of his way to steal other material from my blog and real life (i.e.- ripping on Michael Rappaport during the NBA all-star game, having a post-fantasy football season pizza party, and writing a best selling book about the Boston Red Sox). Well Sports Guy, enough is enough, I can't let this theft of my intellectual property continue. I'll inform you about the lawsuit in the upcoming weeks. It's too bad too, I consider his podcast my favorite, it's too bad our relationship has come to this. Lets move onto the list...

First, in terms of defining what restaurants qualify as 'fast food restaurants,' I went with the loose boundaries of 'food providers who either mainly have stand alone drive-thru buildings, or mainly operate in shopping mall or airport food courts.' This disqualifies places such restaurants as Panera Bread, Jimmy Johns, Potbelly's, Sonny's Barbeque, and possibly Chipotle (but they wouldn't have made the top 10 anyway, so I didn't do any research into what kind of locations they have). Second, the order was determined in terms of 'if a branch of this restaurant was immediately next door to a branch of the company in the position in front of it, and I were hungary, I would choose the one at the lower number.' Meaning, assuming I just hadn't eaten at the joint in position #3, I would pick #3 over numbers 4-10. Here we go!

10- Taco Bell. Ahhh, the Bell. Everyone has a soft spot in their heart (or their gut), for the Bell. We all have great memories, mostly of which are probably partial, of border runs from years gone by. You can't go wrong with the bell, especially in terms of price. Sometimes I wonder how they come up with some of the shit they put on their menus, but for the most part I like it, even though I probably only hit the Bell once every 4 months. This is more of a sentimental pick, mainly due to the fact The Onion did a story about the Bell in Bowling Green.

9- Panda Express. This is more on here simply because I like chinese food and Panda Express is the only real option. Its decent food but I think it's a little pricey, especially for how small the portions are. And, the food isn't good enough to overcome the cost, some places can pull this off, but the Panda can't. I don't think I've ever gone to one that isn't at an airport.

8- Subway. I remember a time when Subway used to be the cheap and light alternative for fast eating. In Subway's hayday it had Quizno's stomped in terms of price, even if they didn't have toasted subs, but that wasn't their game so it was alright. Then Quizno's came along and changed the game. All of a sudden Subway was microwaving their subs and calling them 'toasted.' Then they started jacking up their prices cause at some point they brainwashed the world into believing if you ate their subs you'd instantly drop 10 pounds, screw Jared and their product placement in NBC's 'The Biggest Loser.' Their chocolate chip cookies are phenomenal, turkey breast & ham subs are the bomb, and they have the great little bags of apple slices. But, as I've mentioned before...their employee's are cheap cocksuckers. I'm not going to get started on that, let's move on before I have an aneurism.

7- In-N-Out Burger. This is easily the biggest cult fast food franchise in the history of the world. It started when Mikey in 'Swingers' sported an In-N-Out shirt and has gotten out of control from there. Now, anyone who is anyone is heading straight to an In-N-Out location when they head to Cali, Az, or Las Vegas. I think it's good, but it's also the most overrated chain in the world. The service is slow, and the fries are terrible. Yet, for some reason whenever I'm out west I always hit one up at some point. No joke, one time I ate at In-N-Out 3 times in the same day. I had just gotten back from Australia and there were wildfires and a lot of drinking involved but it did happen. And last year at one near San Francisco, I pissed all over the outside of our own rental car while we were in the drive-thru at 2am. I also have 3 In-N-Out shirts, so deal with it.

6- Burger King. Hands down the worst run fast food chain in history. I can't say that I've ever had a positive experience at a BK, either because of their employees or fellow customers. That being said, Whoppers rule. It's a fact. Plus, they have the King, and he's a pretty cool cat.

5- Sbarro. Nothing says 'I'm at a shopping mall or airport food court' quite like a trip to Sbarro. Their lack of freestanding structures says 'we hate buying, we love renting.' It's a very unique business model, not much unlike baseball hat stores, Sharper Image's, and cell phone accessorie peddlers. I think the best option here is the pizza stromboli with some breadsticks, even if you could fill up a shot glass with grease that comes off the strom. Plus they have pizza, which is never a bad thing. I think Sbarro is at the top of the food court food chain seeing how it's one of the only nationwide (possibly worldwide) staples at airports and malls. Whatever they do, they should keep doing it cause its clearly working.

4- Arbys. For some reason Arbys is like the fine french wine of fast food places. I don't know too many people who would unconditionally go to Arbys at any given point. Most people need to be in the right state of mind, cajoled, or otherwised convinced to head there which is disappointing. Going to Arbys is an event, kind of like going to the circus. When you tell other people you went there they say, 'Wow, really, I love Arbys! I haven't been since I was a kid.' Arbys is absolutely fabulous. Their only real downfall is their lack of locations, but it's also kind of their strong suit because if you had it too much, you might take it for granted. And Arbys doesn't deserve that.

3- Quiznos Sub. As I stated earlier, Quiznos blew up the sub game with their toasted subs. Watching your sub slowly cruise through the oven is like watching your immature son become a polished man right in front of your very eyes. When it comes out, you almost feel bad eating it because you can feel the love that has been baked in. And the icing on the cake is the pepper bar, like cheapass Subway has the balls to offer AYCE condiments to the customers. Their cookies suck, and they only offer chips as sides, but their subs are diabolical (not as good as Potbelly's though). A large classic Italian with heaps of jalapeno's after a big workout is a staple for me. Unlike Panda Express, Quiznos can overcome the steep price because the subs are sooooooo good.

2- Chick-Fil-A. Exhibit A- waffle fries. Do I need to say anything else? No, but I will anyway. Exhibit B- the best and nicest employees of any food place on the planet (they bring you refills so you don't have to leave your table, how sweet is that?). Exhibit C- the best chicken sandwich in the game. Exhibit D- the best breakfast chicken biscuit around. Exhibit E- authentic sweet tea. Their chicken sandwiches are so good McDonald's had to try to steal their idea of 'southern style.' Fuck you McDonalds, that's why you didn't make the list. That and the fact that your mascot is far too excited to be around little kids than what he should be for being a grown man.

1- Wendy's. This was a tough decision, and a very close call, but in terms of fast food joints, Wendy's truly is the king of kings. Their double burger is the best burger hands down. Their spicy chicken sandwich is outstanding. They have the best straight fries out there. The real clincher though is the option to substitute fries on combos for baked potatos, salads, chili, etc. They have the best value meal of any chain which is good in todays tought times. Their main detractor is that they don't have an independent drink island so you can get your own refills, I hate having to stand in line if other people are waiting to order cause when the cashier ignoress them to get your refill they always shoot you a dirty look like you're skipping them in line. Excuse me dick, I'm not skipping you, I've already paid my dues and got my food so stand there and shut up while I get my complimentary refill in a new cup.

LOST Episode 3 Diary...2 weeks late

2009-02-18T10:33:00.000-08:00

As we prepare for tonights 5th episode of LOST, it's probably about time to get to episode 3, 'The Little Prince.' I think I was unable to do this one on time because I had some friends come in town the following night and then had to go to Michigan for a wedding over that next weekend. While these are decent excuses for why I didn't get the diary posted, I must remember that I am not bigger than LOST, and that LOST deserves the proper amount of time and attention. I feel humbled by this mistake and can only promise to try to be a better man in the future. Like A-Rod said in his presser yesterday, "Don't judge me on what I've done in the past, judge me on what I do from this point forward." Seeing how this episode took place 2 weeks ago, I took the opportunity to watch episode 3, as well as ep. 4, again last night to refresh my memory and get properly pumped up for tonights new episode. Here we go...'The Little Prince'...

9:02 EST- Kate is holding baby Aaron on Penny's rescue boat while her doppleganger Jack sits there attempting not to drool all over himself. She tells him that she's going to lie and say the child is hers, of course, Jack doesn't dissapprove. Am I the only one who doesn't see any chance of this working? They weren't even on the island for 1/2 a year, and Kate wasn't pregnant when she got there, and yet shes going to convice everyone the kid is hers? Coming from someone who blew a dude up, I guess this line of thought isn't completely illogical. Good luck with that Kate, I don't see how anything can go wrong.

9:04- Another brilliant move by Kate, she leaves 3 year old Aaron with Sun while she goes to 'negotiate' with the lawyer who showed up at her house asking for blood samples. The odd's of Kate seeing the kid again...roughly 15%. She isn't even 100% sure what side Sun is playing yet. No wonder Jack always feels the need to help Kate, she clearly needs guidance in most aspects of her life. Except in terms of blowing people up, she seems to have that part figured out.

9:10- On the island, Charlotte is still out cold and Sawyer is pacing like a caged animal. Juliette, who has become completely useless this season, keeps telling him to shut up and eventually to leave. She is very calming and doesn't mind busting his balls in front of everyone to meet that end. I can't wait til they hookup, he's Sawyer, you know it's going to happen. In terms of Charlotte, Faraday compares her symptoms from the leaps to 'jet lag.' Sorry bro, I've had jet lag and it's never made me pass out with a massively bloody nose.

9:12- MENSA candidate Kate is at the lawyers office and tries to negotiate with him to find out the identity of his client who's trying to take Aaron. The lawyer calls her out bigtime saying she is in no position to negotiate, which she isn't. She wants to know who is doing this to her, he responds "You did this to yourself." Oh Kate, you probably should ask him if he is a bankruptcy attorney so you can file for mental chapter 11.

9:14- LOSTies on the island are trying to figure out where they should go next, Locke says the Orchid because that's where all the time travelling problems started so that's probably where they'll end. Sawyer asks why they need everyone to come back, to which Locke replies "Don't you want them to come back James? Don't you want her to come back?" Sawyer can't seem to get away from thinking about Kate, he obviously thought he was playing it all smooth but apparently everyone on the fucking island noticed his feelings...and the fact that they boned...boned bigtime while being held captive. BTW, it's sunny as all hell on that island and no one has sunglasses. If I had to squint for 5 months straight, I'd be a testy guy.

9:23- Locke et al. are roaming through the forest at night when they see the beam of light coming from the hatch (the event from the season 1 finale), so obviously the last jump took them back only a few months. A few steps later Sawyer comes across Kate helping Claire give birth to Aaron and gets severly choked up seeing her again. He is mega-whipped, when he hooks up with Juliette things are going to get really weird.

9:30- I just figured out who the one guy from the Wendy's 3conomic's adds is. Not the guy who does all the talking, or the Asian guy with the bowl cut, but the third guy. He was the guy in 'The Dark Knight' who gets busted after the public shooting of Commissioner Gordon. That was bothering me, I'm glad I figured that one out. Also in 'The Dark Knight'...the guy who plays Richard Alpert on LOST, Nestor Carbonell. That's a strange name.

9:34- Miles asks Faraday what is causing the nosebleeds after the time jumps. Faraday thinks it has something to do with amount of exposure to the island. Miles says he, DF, and Charlotte, have the least amount but yet, Charlotte has the worst symptoms. Miles then says he's never been on the island and Faraday asks, "Are you sure?" Ohhhhhh, big hint to the fact that Miles is Dr. Changs child! Boo Ya!

9:39- Kate and Jack follow the lawyer who she just met to see who he meets with at the end of the day. He heads to a hotel and goes to a room. The person opening the door is Claire's mom...this is too obvious. This can't be the person coming after Kate.

9:46- After the lawyer leaves, Jack goes up to the ladie's room to try to talk some sense into her. After mentioning Aaron's name, Claire's mom says, "Who's Aaron?" She obviously isn't there to get the kid back, apparently she's in town to settle her lawsuit with Oceanic Airlines and that the same lawyer just happens to be representing her.

9:48- Cut to the same lawyer pulling into a parking garage and parking next to a van. He gets out and talks to the person in the van who is...Benjamin Linus! Sayid listens as the lawyer tells Ben that the case against shitty Hurley (currently in county lockup) is terrible and he should be released by morning, which plays right into Ben's hands. After the lawyer leaves, Sayid asks Ben who that was. "That was my lawyer," says Ben. Clearly he's found his stronghold on Kate that will force her to go back to the Island, Aaron. I smell blackmail!

9:50- While attempting to row their little boat to the other side of the island, Sawyer opens up to Juliette about his feelings for Kate. This is getting ridiculous, Sawyer just needs to admit he loves her. Juliette then proceeds to get her first bloody nose, uh oh!

9:52- A rubber raft is seen in the midst of a major rain storm, presummably near the island. The boats crew sees someone floating on a big piece of wood and pick him up. ITS JIN! He's still alive! He had to be, he didn't get the proper sendoff that other characters have gotten so that seemed to make sense. Glad to have you back Jin, looks like you need a little chapstick bro.

9:55- Jack and Kate arrive at the docks and meet up with Ben and Sayid. Upon hearing that Jack is working with Ben, Kate is actually able to figure out that Ben is behind the lawyer trying to take Aaron. Well played Kate, I take back the previous MENSA comment.

9:58- Cut back to the island where Jin is coming around and talking to the French crew of the boat. We all see where this is going as he talks to a pregnant French lady and tada!...It's Rousseau. Quelle surprise! Great episode though, these time jumps are making things crazy!

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

2009-02-16T17:17:00.000-08:00

As first reported here last night, my sources in Phoenix say Shaquille O'Neal was seen getting down with the JabbaWockeeZ (from here on referred to as Dan) during the pre-game intros of last nights NBA all-star game. This routine completely blew my mind and I've watched it about 100 times today up to this point. Here it is, embedded for your enjoyment:

After doing a little research about Dan, I've found out a few things that I will now disclose to help expand your mind. Item 1- Dan was the season 3 champion of MTV's America's Best Dance Crew. Item 2- Before filming began for the MTV show, one of the members of the crew died. That's a bummer. Item 3- Their name comes from a poem written by Lewis Carroll called 'Jabberwocky' that was mentioned in 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.' Item 4- All members of Dan are required to bring at least 2 different colored Snuggie's on the road with them. It's possible one of these four things isn't true, I challenge you to figure out which one.

Possibly the best thing about the NBA all-star weekend was the ability to hype up the Shaquille "The Big Shaqtus" O'Neal-Kobe "The Black Mamba" Bryant fued. Actually, the amazingly large number of times I've had to use the hyphen key on my keyboard the past two entrys is the best thing to come of this weekend...the Shaq-Kobe fued thing is #2. The best rumor I read was that Shaq blames Kobe for his divorce because apparently in testimony from his rape case, Bryant went on in detail about Shaq's encounters with numerous women over the years. Shaq apparently wasn't upset that he had cheated on his wife on what appears to be hundreds, possibly thousands of times, he was just upset his wife heard about it. My personal theory is that Shaq wants to go back to L.A., but that Kobe would rather lose the NBA finals w/o Shaq than win with him. Kobe is a real interesting cat, I'd really like to meet him. You know how people say it takes more muscles to frown than to smile? I don't think this applies to Bryant, everytime he smiles on tv, I get the sense he'd rather be getting chemotherapy than trying to force a half-assed completely disingenuine grin. Shaqtastic...29 points.

Another thought I forgot to mention last night was why haven't there been any inklings whatsoever about NBA stars shooting roids? Has anyone seen LeBron James or Dwight Howard lately? Dear christ, they're freakin' monsters! Check out how LBJ gets huge here, and Superman here. Although, apparently they'll never be as big as Rasheed Wallace. I guess the only evidence against them is their size, because all those guys seem extraordinarily nice to each other, the media, and fans. The NBA is in the midst of a huge renaissance right now and these two are just a few of the guys leading the way, it's funny how the American public responds to a sport when it isn't being led by a bunch of self-centered overpaid trouble-causing gangstas. Sure, LBJ et al. are overpaid, but they seem like cool guys.

NBA All-Star Awesomeness

2009-02-15T17:37:00.000-08:00

I knew the yearly defensive basketball clinic known as the NBA all-star game was this weekend but hadn't realized this event had morphed into a week long celebration of half-assed events full of c-list celebs. I also knew the game was on Sunday night on TNT but was upset to learn there wasn't a 'Law & Order' marathon to lead into it. I know there's a 'L&O' episode that was centered on a washed-up basketball player who murders his brother that would have been a perfect lead in, and a 'L&O' marathon was needed cause tv today was absolutely terrible. When the Daytona 500 is the only thing even remotely worth watching...that's bad. According to the NBA's website the first official event of the 'weekend' was the Swifter Wet Jet Zygote game which featured 1 month old fetuses of people who have been extras in either Tom Hanks or Will Smith films, which took place two weeks ago. I think nba.com has the highlight video for the game. On Tuesday, they held their annual 'Brandon vs. his high school friends in SEGA Bulls vs. Blazers,' competition. In round 1, John Starks won a barnburner over Mark Price 208-201. Price really lost his legs the final few minutes allowing Starks to pull away, but it was a spirited competition by both participants. It was really awkward breaking into my old high school house so we could recreate the proper playing conditions from 1993 but it was well worth it.

By Friday, they had actually worked up to an event where it's possible you've heard of some of the people participating, the McDonalds Celebrity Game. This game used to be on MTV and was called the Rock-n-Jock BBall Jam but apparently after Roger Mcdowell quit returning MTV's calls about participating, they sold the rights to the game to the NBA. Tragically, the league has done away with the 25 point circles on the floor, as well as the 20 foot high basket that was worth 50 points, apparently in the name of 'competitive integrity.' Whatever NBA, I'd rather see 5'8" celebs dunking trying to dunk on a 9 foot rim. So, within .0004 seconds of seeing the lead-in to the tv telecast on the Ocho, I knew exactly how this game was gonna go down. Fade in on Stuart Scott and Terrell Owens, boo ya! Is it possible for a celebrity team playing for charity to be imploded by one of its players for ripping apart the coach at half time? It is when T.O. is on the team! I could already see the headline on nba.com for the following morning, 'T.O. rips Magic Johnson after being benched in pick-up game.' Or possibly, 'T.O. incarcerated after attempting to stuff basketball down Michael Rappaports throat on failed alley-oop.' Is there any question that T.O. is going to be that one guy who is trying 8 times harder than anyone else on the court? Everyone knows that guy I'm talking about, the guy in a friendly coed game that ends up tackling a girl and breaks her shoulder? The guy who wears metal cleats to a work softball game and slides into second spikes up? Yeah, you know that guy. If I were to put the over/under on T.O. assists for the game I'd have to put it at .5, and I would definately bet the house on the under. Like theres a chance in hell he's getting an assist! Upon checking out nba.com on Saturday I was vindicated as T.O. poured in a game high 17 points and was named MVP (for the second straight year no less), but he also had 1 assist. And Rappaport, the worst actor ever, had 8 fouls...good work champ.

As I'm typing this I'm watching the actual all-star game and noticed a few things. 1- the arena announcer must have taken some horse tranquilizers or something, I've never heard a more subdued p.a. guy. But, I actually liked it. Watching the intros during most NBA games is like watching the intros for the WWE Royal Rumbe...except on more steroids...if that's possible. I think theres a happy median between the normal gutteral screaming of most announcers and this mope. 2- Shaquille O'Neal is hilarious, his dancing spiel with the Jabbawockeez during the intros was spectacular. How did he get so many q's? I probably shouldn't worry about it. 3- Those dancing guys with the white masks are called the Jabbawockeez, I didn't know that before. After seeing them in those creepy Gatorade G commercials, I googled 'white masked dancers' and was never able to figure out who they were. 4- At halftime they said the players from the 2008 USA mens basketball team were going to be given rings to commemorate their gold medal performance. Fuck, call me crazy but didn't they already get the commemorative gold fucking medals? Do they really need a ring to help remember that two week period where they monkey stomped the rest of the world? 5- Craig Sager, seriously? Are you being serious with that suit and shoes? Seriously, enough is enough.

We Don't Give a Damn...

2009-02-09T16:02:00.000-08:00

...for the whole state of Michigan. At least that's how the song of Ohio State faithful goes. Obviously that little ditty wasn't written with the $1.25 beers that the fine village of Frankenmuth, Michigan goes. Don't get me wrong, this blog isn't going to turn into a big love fest for the state up north, but it's possible that behind the Wolverines, snowmobiles, and camouflage, the state might have something good to offer. Heading into enemy territory during daylight hours for over 48 hours, like this trip would require, normally isn't my cup of tea. Normally, I'm more of a covert assassin like during my times pulling special ops in 'Nam. Get in under the cover of darkness, take out your target, and get out before the enemy never even knew you were there. It's hard to operate this way during a wedding though, so I knew I was going to have to work out of my comfort zone. I was even going to have to drive right by Ann Arbor, this would prove to be a test of my mental fortitude.

The reason for heading to The Muth was for my friend Jeff Sypek's wedding, the reception actually. The wedding was somewhere called Essexville, 'The Gateway to Saginaw Bay', roughly 25 miles north of The Muth. The reception was in Frankenmuth proper, home of 3 bars open until roughly 2am...or so they claim. The drive from Columbus to there was roughly 270 miles, so I took Friday off of work so that I could take my time getting there and stop in Bowling Green for lunch. After only being able to force down 3 pieces of Myles, I boxed up the leftovers, hit the SBX for some sweet BGSU brown hoodies and hit the road up RT. 23 for the remaining 150 miles. Upon getting to the hotel, my date for the weekend, a guy named Kermit, was about to land so I head north to the bustling MBS airport to pick him up. Friday night started at the Main Street Tavern where beers were $2.50, popcorn was .25 cents, and they had 1 speaker to jam the tunes. After a few beers we headed a few blocks south to Tiffany's for what would prove to be the highlight of the weekend, $1.25 cans of Old Style Light! The remainder of the night was spent there with uber-nerd, FIJI, and snazzy dresser, Northwestern neuroscientist Adam Stocker. At bar close we headed back to the hotel not having done any shots.

Saturday, we started off by hitting local haunt T-Dubs for breakfast. When I initially did internet research to familiarize myself with The Muth, I found T-Dubs and had a utopian vision of it being some kind of bizarro B-Dubs, where hot wings and draft beer ruled the landscape. This was not so. While the T did have a few draft beers and some bootleg 'Wing Dings' it wasn't what I was hoping for, but oh well. At 11am we ordered our first beers for the day, we were off and running! After getting some good grub in our bellies, we headed across the street to Tiffany's for a few cheap cold ones before we needed to change and head to the wedding. After 4 or 5 there, we got dressed up and hit the wedding. It was a basic wedding, I don't really have anything to say about it. On our way back though, we hit what looked like someones house that said 'John's Bar.' We walked in and preceeded to be looked at by everyone in there like we just walked in from Jupiter. This happened no matter where we went, it was very strange. My theory is that in towns based on tourism like The Muth, locals never know what kind of out-of-town weirdo is walking in next so when they hear the door open they always turn to look to see what they're dealing with. The lady working was nice though so we had a few beers with the Guss' before heading back to Tiffany's for the second time of the day, but not the last time either. This time the bartender recognized us and got us beers before we even asked...and proceeded just to run us a tab. We had been in town 20 hours and we had already reached local status! After a few more there it was time to hit up the reception at Zehnder's.

The reception was a good time. Two of the bartenders were mixing good drinks, the third however was really being ants at a picnic. Yeah, I said it, ants at a picnic. She was only mixing drinks w/ 1 shot of liquor while the one guy, Side Show Bob, and his cohort were mixing doubles. For my free drinking dollar, I want more bang for my buck, so the lady got ignored and I did my best to spread the word with everyone in attendance not to get drinks from her. She was issue #1, issue #2 was that the bar was closed while dinner was served. This was slightly irritating, but luckily a few people at the table had stocked up for some kind of drinking apocalypse so I stole some drinks from them and the day was saved. The rest of the reception went well, the dj whipped out the Boss' 'Glory Days' and a little 'Chicken Polka,' and we were the last ones to leave. When the dj has broken down his equipment and you're still there drinking, it's probably time to go, but hey, I had been tipping Side Show Bob good so he let us hang. After that, we hit up Tiffany's for one last time. There we saw the young ladies from the reception wait staff and had a few beers with them. By the time we got home at the end of the night it was after 1am which meant we had been drinking for 14 hours, quality stuff! BTW, the chicken dinners at Zehnders are completely overrated, the mashed potatoes were good, and judging by how many rolls Kermit ate, they were good too...real good.

Stupor Bowl Recap

2009-02-05T17:53:00.000-08:00

So, last Sunday was Super Bowl 43 between the Steelers and Cardinals and a lot of people came to play that day, whether it be in Tampa, FL (site of the game), or Columbus, OH (my location). Some people shy away from the big stage, but not me, I say bring it on, my liver can't tell if it's a preseason scrimmage or the biggest stage in all of professional American sports. The last two weekends of the NFL season were tough for a Cleveland Browns fan like myself, and the need to self-medicate to deal with a possible Ravens or Steelers Super Bowl victory was inevitable. Case #1- Baltimore Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers for the AFC Championship, Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009. Or, to put it another way...the former Cleveland Browns vs. our most hated arch rivals for the right to go to the Super Bowl...something which we've never been able to do. I don't even need to say anything besides that. It was singlehandedly the biggest slap in the face game I've ever been forced to watch. To be honest, it was so bad I didn't drink one beer or do one shot, I actually cleaned my bed and bathrooms and did laundry. And luckily for me, it was also the longest game in NFL playoff history, taking nearly 13 hours to play. This game is really the worst case scenario for any sports fan. It wasn't like if Seattle was playing Carolina, a case in which I don't really give a shit about either team or the outcome. But, in this game I actually have gutteral hatred for both teams and was wishing their team buses were in horrendous wrecks on the way to the stadium. If they were to hit each other it would be two birds with one stone, the odds of the buses being in seperate wrecks are even more remote.

Case #2- Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Arizona Cardinals for the NFL Championship, Feb. 1, 2009. That statement could read Steelers vs. (insert anyone of the 16 NFC teams) and it would be depressing. For this game I vowed not to stay sober, and sober I would not be. On Thursday, I saw Sunday Sara at my favorite bar, Novak's, and she said she was working on Sunday...which is why she's Sunday Sara. Uber-cute Shannon also said she would be there so it sounded like a deal. By the time gameday rolled around all I needed to do was get some sunflower seeds and I was ready to rock. Upon getting to the bar, we layed out the groundrules for our anti-Steelers drinking game. Pretty simple really, whenever something bad happened to the Steelers, shots! 'Something bad' originally meant a big play by the Cardinals (i.e. touchdown or turnover), but as the first quarter ended it became painfully obvious that the rules needed to be changed or else we'd be as sober as a reborn Christian on well...any occasion I guess. After 15 minutes of play: Zona- 3 offensive plays, Brandon- 0 shots. The Cards come back in the second with a nice scoring drive that leads to 7, they're coming back, shot #1. After a nice defensive stand, the Cards are driving again at the end of the half when...well...you know what happened. Know we're doing shots to deal with the pain of the inevitability of another Steelers Super Bowl ring. At halftime there was a shot for Springsteen singing 'Glory Days,' and at some point in the third quarter I think we did shots for a Rothlisberger incomplete pass. Things around this point get a little fuzzy and the next memory I'm 100% sure of is waking up the next morning feeling tired and a little hungover.

In terms of my Facebook status regarding the location of my car, it was one street over. Go Browns in '09!

Going to the Whip

2009-02-03T17:47:00.000-08:00

Just to warn everyone, I think the announcing team of Steve Lavin and some other guy (who are presently announcing the OSU home basketball game vs. Purdue), have coined the soon-to-be most over used cliche of this college season...'Chief.' Chief, as in the big Indian (feather, not dot) from the movie 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.' They (I'm not sure which one) used the film reference in regards to OSU freshman center BJ Mullens, who is 7 feet tall. At one point he went out of the game causing Lavin to go into hysterics about how OSU needed to bring Chief back into the game, and how they need to run their offense through Chief, and how if his wife was there Lavin would let Chief sleep with her. Apparently, there's a scene in the movie where Jack Nicholson is shooting hoops with Chief, and he offers the Indian gum for playing well. Do you think this slipped past ESPN's goons? Of course not, so as an appendix to the Chief cliche, we'll be hearing the term 'Fruit Strip Gum' until the end of March Madness as well. I'm opposed to this on numerous levels. First, Fruit Stripe gum sucks. Second, you shouldn't need to be bribed to get up for a game of hoops. If you have that little self pride that you need a pack of gum to get psyched to make it rain 3's on some poor saps mellon...you need to re-evaluate your priorities. That's a fact Jack.

Another thing involving an OSU sports telecast took place a few weeks ago and almost made me fall out of bed. Knowing my propensity for falling this winter this probably doesn't surprise you. For some reason The Ocho was replaying the OSU-Michigan football game from '06 and I happened to turn it on at a point where Brent Musberger made the point, 'Jim Tressel has to be the best play caller in the country folks.' Dear lord, I about pissed myself. While that statement was possibly true at the time, anyone that's watched OSU football since Troy Smith's graduation knows most 3rd graders could predict their plays with around 70% accuracy. I'm sure me and the other 7 people that are sick of Jim Tressel found that statement hilarious. 7-1 vs Michigan though, there isn't much I can say about that. I probably didn't need to put that last sentence in there, but I wanted to for all my readers who are from/or root for U of M. Go RichRod!

Enough with amateur athletes, lets move on to the professionals...like myself in the running world. The past few days have been fairly monumental in my running career as I train for my first competitive half marathon in two weeks. On Saturday I set a personal record for longest run, in terms of both time and distance. 21 miles in 3 hours and 14 minutes. It was a pretty crappy run as there was a shitty head wind for half the run, there was tons of street traffic, and the sidewalks were a snowy/slushy/icy mess. But, knowing that last weekend was my best chance for a long run since I'm going to a wedding this weekend, I perservered and grinded it out big time. I was really psyched, but my legs really weren't. Sunday was a day off since it's the Lord's Day, and oh yeah, it was the Super Bowl, which gave my legs a much needed rest. My liver on the other hand was forced to pick up the slack, I'll tell that story in another post. Then last night I went out for my basic run, I didn't know what to expect after the PR on Saturday so I set out with modest expectations. After the first mile though, I realized I felt good so I started to pick up the pace when possible (the sidewalks were horrendously icy, the worst I've seen due to the temp rise, then re-freeze making for large plates of frictionless ice). At mile 8 I still was kicking ass so I thought I'd turn it up for the last 2 miles (mostly nice sidewalks on OSU's campus that are ice free, thanks THE OSU!). For moments like this, I'm coining my own running cliche...'going to the whip.' This is mainly a horse racing term that refers to when the jockey starts beating the shit out of his mount to get it to run faster. In politically correct terms the jockey is 'asking the horse for more effort.' Bullshit, I ask the lady at Wendy's for another thing of butter for my baked potato, and it doesn't involve me hitting her with a leather whip...unless she's lucky...oh behave! So, I went to the whip for miles 9 and 10 and I responded very well, 10 miles in 85 minutes, 8:30 pace. That's the fastest I've ever run for that distance, quelle suprise. However, my knee is a little sore today from what seems like 31 miles of cross country running between Saturday and Monday. I took it easy and biked mainly today, this week looks to be pretty easy as I head to scenic Frankenmuth, Michigan for a friends' wedding this weekend.

LOST Episode 2 Diary

2009-02-01T07:57:00.000-08:00

This is getting to be ridiculous, this is the 3rd (third) time I'm attempting to write this g'damn blog and I'm getting a little upset. As I write that last sentence I start to wonder, whats worse? My computer for screwing me the previous 2 times, or me for trying to do it again and again? I guess that's a question for the ages. Plus, I feel as if I'm treading in uncharted waters...is it even legal to post a blog on the weekend? Is there some kind of code of ethics in blogging that says roughly 4pm on Fridays is the cutoff for blog posts until the following Monday? I might need to get some clarification on this, I'd hate to have my blogging priviledge revoked over a simple misunderstanding of the rules. And remember kids, just like driving a car, blogging is a priviledge, not a right. Do you think kids in Iraq under the Saddam Hussein regime were allowed to blog? Hell no. God bless the USA.

As I did last week, I would have liked to have written this on Thursday night so you, my awesome readers, could read this and possibly watch a little 30ROCK, which would set the table for a stellar Friday and be a springboard for a great weekend. Unfortunately, a social engagement prevented me from accomplishing this on Thursday night. But, since I'm a loser, I thought I'd give it a crack on Friday night since I didn't have any plans to go out. Luckily for me about half way through the first attempt I got an 'Application Crashed' message on the computer which I'd never seen before, ever. No big deal I thought, blogspot.com autosaves your work as you go. Upon reopening the page on attempt #2 on Saturday afternoon, it became obvious that 'Draft Autosaved' simply means 'We saved the title and nothing else, good luck remembering everything else you typed douche.' Soooo...partway through attempt #2, Firefox froze up and became unresponsive, great news. Which brings us to the present, where blogspot couldn't even manage to save the f'ing title. Thanks dicks.

I need to clarify a statement I made earlier when I said 'social engagement.' What I meant to say was I went out and got loaded at my favorite weekday hangout, Novak's on High, home of the $13 5 hour bar tab. God bless Shannon, Sara, and Jenny, they're the best. And kudos to the person rocking out on the jukebox, Bon Jovi's 'Raise Your Hands?' Dear lord, that song kicks ass, that one is going on my bachelor party megamix no questions asked. Upon arriving home from getting tanked, I felt the need to rewatch Wednesday nights LOST episode at which point I sent Kristen P. a LOST themed Facebook comment. A LOST comment at 1:45 am...classy, I know.

Onto the subject at hand, I had a huge revelation about the season premiere a few days ago. At the beginning of that episode it shows what I presumed to be Dr. Changs wife and his newborn child. The only problem with that scene is that I thought all women that became pregnant on the island died? How did this lady have a kid and survive? The scene was short and seemed inconsequential at the time, but I think there are a lot of questions that need to be answered in one sense or another. Onto episode 2, 'Jughead,'...

9:00- The show starts with Desmond running around looking for someone/something at a small Asian port. Oh boy! A Desmond episode? It's going to be uncomfortable for me to sit with this boner for the next 60 minutes. As it turns out he's looking for a doctor to help Penny give birth. Who goes sailing around the world when they're preggers? That's just irresponsible parenting. Des and Penny, you're better than that, come on now.

9:03- Flash forward to the present where Des and Penny are with their son. This is uncomfortable, I'm now jealous of a fictional 3 year old for having such awesomely cool parents.

9:07- Hmmm, The Others are attempting to take the Losties hostage with shitty homemade bows and arrows. I guess the current economic of the world knows no limits, even The Others have been effected and can't afford guns. You'll never catch me being taken hostage by someone with a bow and arrow, how lame. And seriously, could Daniel Faraday's stock rise anymore? In the history of tv no character has had such a meteroic rise in prominance from one season to the next. We're witnessing history here folks.

9:12- Big time foreshadowing in conversation between Desmond and Penny. Penny tells Desmond, 'You can't go back to the island.' Desmond responds, 'Why would I want to go back there?' Translation, at some point Desmond needs/wants to go back to the island and needs to choose between his family and the island. Don't question this, I'm a genious, more evidence to this fact will be presented later in this post.

9:14- Miles Straume, the Asian member of the freighters research team, whips out his skills as the group nears the stream. This isn't really that important but it led to the best text of the night by Kristen. I had sent her a text referring to him as 'Myles.' She responded saying I only spelled his name like that because of my infatuation with Myles Pizza in Bowling Green. Touche, my friend. She is correct that my subconscious love for the delicious pie plays a role in my spelling as I find out his name is spelled with an I, not a Y.

9:20- Desmond has found his way to Cambridge where they tell him they have no record of Faraday ever being there. Desmond, being a smart, enquisitive, handsome devil like myself, decides to poke around a little and finds a sealed off room with a picture of Faraday and the leftovers of his experiements. A janitor walks in and gives him a name of a lady he should go see. Des plays it cool and talks to him, I would have jumped the guy from behind and pulled some ninja shit, broken his neck, and snuck out the back door so no one ever knew I was there. I guess there are a few different ways to handle every situation.

9:28- Locke, talking to the soliders on the island, refers to everyone as 'My people.' He really appears to be buying into his destiny as the leader of everyone.

9:34- Desmond goes to the house the janitor told him about and finds the lady is in a vegatative state due to something Faraday did to her. The implication is that he was running some kind of time travel experiements on her but I propose another theory. Faraday is such a monster in the bedroom that she had sensory overload while doing it and was left in this coma-like condition. I'm just putting that out there. Unfortunately this conflicts with my other theory that Faraday is gay, I need to reconcile these two views. The lady's sister tells Desmond that Charles Widmore was the one funding Faraday's research, and is now paying for all of the girl's medical bills, which is nice of him I think. This episode is absolutely insane, there is so much going on, I love it.

9:49- Desmond charges into Widmore's office! This is outstanding stuff! Widmore has been shown throughout the show to be a stone cold guy, never backing down from anyone, and always pushing his agenda. The tide has turned apparently as Widmore asks Des a question about Penny's well-being, but Desmond refuses to answer and asks C-Dub (as I'm going to refer to Charles Widmore from now on) for Faraday's mom's location. Widmore gives in but admonishes Hume to "After delivering your message, get out of this," and to "...go back to where you were hiding." Spectacular stuff, great interaction between two adversaries.

9:50- Kristen texts at some point asking when the next time jump is going to take place. My response is at the end of this episode, after Faraday disarms the bomb, but before Locke has a chance to finish his conversation with Richard Alpert. Remember that statement. Anyway...Locke barges into the soldiers camp and demands to speak with Ageless Richard. Richard comes to see Locke but has no idea who he is, eventhough he's seen him numerous times in the future. While he may be ageless, the time leaps don't seem to effect him in some manner...interesting. Alpert barks at one of the soldiers...who turns out to be a young C-Dub, did I mention this episode is crazy? I might have an epileptic seizure soon.

9:57- Desmond gets back to the boat to see Penny and their son Charlie...yeah, Charlie, obviously an hommage to Charlie Pace, who Des couldn't save no matter how hard he tried as shown in season 3's 'Flashes Before Our Eyes,' one of the best episodes ever. Desmond tries to lie to Penny about Faraday's mom but she sees right through it. The Humes are going to Los Angeles!

10:00- Just like clockwork, Locke is talking to Richard when the high pitched sound of the time jump is heard. Locke needs more information about how to get off the island...but...too late! The jump has happened, just as I predicted (minus the Faraday disarming the bomb thing, but 2 out of 3 isn't bad). Charlotte, who's playing with the houses money anyway since she's started having symptoms of the dreaded time jump sickness, falls over with a massively bloody nose (which was the final symptom for the guy in season 4 episode 'The Constant,' right before he croaked). She sucks anyway, her character is no big loss. Although, when Faraday was telling her he loved her she looked really happy, like no one had told her that in a really long time. Will Faraday be able to save her? Doubtful.

Food for Thought

2009-01-27T18:10:00.000-08:00

It's come to my attention recently that I'm completely addicted to pop (if you're a southerner you probably know it as soda or Coke). For the past few years I've done a really good job of drinking it sparsely and hadn't even bought any for home consumption (that didn't involve mixing with liquor) since I lived in Chicago over 4 years ago, that's the God honest truth. But recently...oh boy have I fallen off the wagon. While I still haven't bought any for home use (again, besides mixing with the hard stuff) I've probably been drinking pop 6 days a week. I never, uh hem..rarely, have it with dinner (which I find to be an odd moral victory), and never get the king size 48 oz. drinks at fast food joints, but sometimes I just really go to town, especially after long workouts. Two weeks ago I vowed to put this nonsense to an end and have been staying pretty strong. But...POP IS SOOOOO GOOD! But...it's also like drinking battery acid, and for a highly trained athlete like myself, that can't last. So, this is my Alamo, no more pop while I train for running a long unspecified distance. Any words of encouragement during this struggle with carbonated dependence are greatly appreciated.

Another thing that has come up on my radar recently is the difference between Velveeta Shells and Cheese vs. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Let's be serious here, there is absolutely no comparison... as long as you are not an 8 year old. The uneducated mind of an 8 year old is simple and ignorant on the subject of mass produced pastas mixed with cheese that come in a small cardboard box so they are not worthy to join this discussion. Velveeta is the Mercedes of this niche food, while Kraft is the ugly basic US car with shitty instruments that you just hope you get 3 good years out of before you have to jettison it for a nicer and more reliable import. The difference between Velveeta and Kraft is like the eternal struggle between Target and Wal-Mart. Sure, Wal-Mart has cheap plasticy crap that will save you a buck, but at the end of the day, wouldn't you rather pay that extra dollar and see some cute girls at the Target on Olentangy River Road near Ohio State's campus? I think we all know the answer to that one. Velveeta is in a class of its own, unless you're going to compare it to some killer homemade shit that your mom taught you how to make that has ground beef and/or bacon bits involved. Now, I understand there might be some outrage for my lack of respect for Kraft Mac & Cheese. I was once a kid and dined upon Kraft and probably even liked it at the time. Having some Mac & Cheese and some hot dogs and putting them on the same plate, and having some of the ketchup getting mixed in with the pasta, those were heady days for sure. But as I look back, I now realize that I was a child with no spine because I refused to stand up for what is right, which is Velveeta Shells and Cheese on the plates of every decent American. One horrible sidenote to Velveeta, I made some for dinner tonight and looked at the nutritional info on the box and noticed that if you take down the whole box you're pumping nearly 1000 calories into your system. That is ludicrous.

This debate made me think of another battle that wages every day for thousands of citizens in this great country of ours during lunch hour, Quiznos or Subway? Bitch please, Subway doesn't even hold a candle to Quiznos in this argument. The only thing they have going for them is their chocolate chip cookies and bags of apple slices. Besides that, Subway is useless to me. Their attempt to 'toast' subs is a day late and a dollar short in my mind, microwaving their sandwiches like they do is a slap in the face to the good people of Quiznos who actually bake a little love into all their delicious sandwiches. Is Quiznos kind of pricey? Absolutely, but have you been into a Subway lately and gotten a footlong meal deal combo? Dear christ, it's the same price. And after the mental anquish of dealing with tightwad Subway employees, Quiznos comes out miles ahead every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Seriously Subway employees, do you actually pay for veggies/condiments out of your own pockets? For fuck sake, when I ask for jalapenos, I don't mean "could you please put 2 jalapeno slices on my 12" sandwich." I mean "put a lot of fucking jalapenos on my sandwich so I can actually taste them you douchebag." Goddamn that pisses me off.

Here's your music video of the day: C'mere by Interpol. One of my ten favorite songs by one of my favorite bands. This is on my running playlist on my iPod, when I'm in trouble I dial this up during a run. Enjoy

YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS!

2009-01-26T17:48:00.000-08:00

Actually, I just wrote that headline to get you more excited about this post...if that's possible. After a 4 day absence, I'm sure you're chomping at the bit for some new material from The King of Kings, Brandon C. Deagle, ESQ. We in the business call that headline tactic 'the hook.' Studies show that people who read the first sentence of a blog are 73% more likely to read the whole post than people who merely read the headline. Actually, I completely made that up as well, but if someone in the advertising/marketing field were to tell me that...I would believe it without question. But, you've already read this far, so why quit now? You're not a quitter are you? Only Taliban and Al-Qaeda are quitters, and you're not one of them are you? I didn't think so, so enjoy the rest of this post and the ones to follow that I'm sure you'll read unconditionally. Its been 4 whole days since we last talked and a lot has gone down in my world since then so let's get to it. Actually, this was a pretty quiet weekend so I'll probably write about something else.

Topic #1- In an attempt to expand my verbal horizons and stay mentally sharp I subscribed some time ago to a daily email called 'Word of the Day.' You can check it out here if you're not to vacuous. To pass on this adeptness to my glorious readers, I will be dispersing some of these words throughout my posts, to help you proliferate your mental acuity as well. It will be kind of a little divertissement that we, me the writer and you the reader, will play to see if you can find these appellations and start to use them in your everyday life. A game of cat and mouse if you will, except in this game everyone will be a winner because we will be gaining knowledge together (I wanted to find a little known, formal word for knowledge, but as it turns out there aren't any better alternatives, imagine that).

Topic #2- I saw 'Frost/Nixon' last night and thought it was pretty excellent. I had a really odd feeling though as it played out because I felt bad that I didn't honestly know too much about the subject even though it's fairly recent history. This made me feel kind of bad because I didn't want to let the movie make up my mind about Nixon, or David Frost for that matter, before knowing more about the subjects. I had never even heard of these interviews before so upon getting home I did some internet research on the interviews and who Frost was/is. It turns out David Frost earned being knighted in England and still does a lot of quality reporting (he does a video series called Frost over the World on AlJazeeraEnglish's YouTube Channel...here). He was even a guest on The Daily Show in which he discusses the Nixon interviews (watch Jon Stewart attempt to blow him here). The guy who played Dick Nixon, Frank Langella, was amazing and is deserving of the Academy Award for best actor in my opinion. Langella has played cocksuckers in the past (see 'Good Night and Good Luck,' and 'Dave') which served him well in playing one of the biggest uber-douches in history. From what I can tell about Nixon, the only person I think I can find comparison to is former college basketball coach Bob Knight. A bully of the most uptight and virtuous variety who thinks they are immune from the most basic social edicts because they feel they're doing work of a higher order. I get the feeling that Nixon, like Knight, felt he could do whatever he wanted at any given point because he truly believed the ends justified the means. In the same manner Knight, a true dictator, felt it was alright to physically and mentally abuse players, Nixon deemed it alright to break countless laws for what he thought was 'political containment' after Watergate. Overall, while I wasn't alive during Nixon's faux pas', I get the feeling the movie did a very fair job of portraying the man and the events the movie focus' on. Unlike Oliver Stone's 'W,' (which from what I hear and percieved from commercials) which was an all-out lambasting of George W. Bush, 'Frost/Nixon' made Nixon out to be a sympathetic character in some ways, a true prisoner of his own personality. The candid conversations between Frost and Nixon are the most interesting parts of the movie, I only wonder how much of those were actual discussions or if they were generalizations of shorter statements or perceptions of Nixon's actions toward Frost. Either way, I strongly encourage everyone to see it. While it was great, I can't say it was better than 'Slumdog Millionaire.' It definately wasn't as uniquely done or as entertaining as a whole. To be honest, after seeing 'Frost/Nixon' once, I'm not sure what would ever really possess me to see it again, not cause it's bad, just because I'm not sure what I would gain from watching it again. It did inspire me to do research on the subject however, which is something most movies don't do. Wow, that review went kind of long, sorry about that.

Here is possibly my second favorite song from 2008, Does it Offend You, Yeah?'s Dawn of the Dead. Super catchy song, terribly horrendous video.

LOST Premiere Diary

2009-01-22T17:39:00.000-08:00

I know in my last post I said I would finish telling you why my weekend was so piss poor in my next entry. Well, hate to dissapoint but with the LOST premiere, some things have to take a back seat. If you're truly dying to know what happened on Saturday night and Sunday feel free to call/email me and I'll give you all the details. If not, heres the short version: Saturday night I could barely walk cause I ran 18 miles and I was set-up on a blind date that didn't really go so well. Sunday, I had to watch the Browns two biggest rivals, the Steelers and Ravens play for the AFC championship...humongous slap in the face, actually I'd rather not talk about that. Onto the important stuff...

I'm not really sure how to put into words how excited I was for the LOST season 5 premiere last night. The writers strike basically ruined my life last year as we were only given 13 episodes of the best show ever put on free broadcast television, and ever since then I've had an empty feeling inside that not even more cowbell could cure. While the season 4 finale was the best single episode of any tv show in the history of the world, I still felt robbed and was looking forward to this new season like it was nobody's business. When the airdate for the season 5 premiere was announced last fall I was like a really fat guy hearing about the new Triple Angry Whopper at Burger King, except my appetite was for a triple helping of Desmond, Jack, and Kate. Wow, when I read that last sentence out loud it sounds pretty gay. Actually, not just pretty gay, it sounds super duper Short North, Columbus gay. But as Faraday would go on to tell Sawyer in the premiere, "You can't change the past James." So to honor the show, I won't change the homoerotic sentence, not for you, not for anybody.

To best chronicle my thoughts as the show unfolded I decided I would keep a running diary of what was happening. A few thoughts before the show starts, FOX made one good call and one bad call with their programming choices tonight. Good- moving American Idol to 8 so it didn't compete with the actual premiere. Bad- premiering the new show 'Lie to Me' at 10 pm, during the 2nd hour of LOST. If you're Tim Roth you must be killing your agent, you go from being in a kickass movie like 'Reservoir Dogs' to being put in a pilot that premieres during the same time slot of a ratings monster? Yikes, Ari Gold would never let shit like that happen to one of his clients. I was also going to put in a little tirade about TBS airing the new Tyler Perry show 'Meet the Browns,' which I'm sure is hilarious, cough, cough, during the LOST premiere. I was going to...but now I'm not. Onto the LOST...the first hour was basically a refresher of the past 4 seasons for people who possibly just started watching. The real good stuff didn't start til 9...

9:00 pm EST- The show starts with the Asian doctor who goes by 3 different names attempting to film a Dharma Initiative educational film in the past only to be called away by a worker, as they talk a person walks up and takes off his hardhat to reveal its Daniel Faraday! Oh snap! It looks like this guy is going to play a big role from here on in, he's a shaky guy, but he's better than the other members of the freighter research team.

9:06- Ben and Jack are at the funeral home and decide they need to take Locke's body. Does it get any lower than stealing a dead guys body from a shitty funeral home (or nice funeral home for that matter) with a drugged-out, boozed-up surgeon who has a shitty beard? I think Ben Linus needs to re-evaluate the people he hangs out with. If he was wearing sweatpants I'd say he had absolutely positiely 100% hit rock bottom.

9:12- First text from my LOST buddy Jimmy- 'LOST is back.' You're goddamn right it is.

9:18- Uh oh, Locke looks up to see the crashing plane of Yemi, the Priest brother of my second favorite LOST character, Mr. Eko. Dear GOD, I don't ask for much but please, please, bring back Mr. Eko for at least a 2 episode arc. Thank you. Sincerely, Brandon C. Deagle

9:27- If I were Sayid I wouldn't be caught dead with Hurley. Hurley is easiestly the worst character on the show. Sayid was in my top 3 characters for a while, especially after the season 2 episode 'One of Them,' in which it is revealed his nickname is Sayid the Torturer. I wish that was my nickname, how awesome would that be if when I walked into a bar everyone said, "Hey! It's Brandon the Torturer! Let's have a beer!" Sadly, I'm not sure Sayid is even in my top 5 characters anymore, he's really forgotten what he's about...the torturing.

9:36- It's obvious by this point that Faraday is now a major player. It's too bad I hate him, not Daniel Faraday, or the guy that plays him (Jeremy Davies), but the fact that Davies played Corporal Upham in 'Saving Private Ryan.' Upham is the biggest pussy character in any movie ever. First, he lets the one Jewish soldier take a knife in the throat from a Kraut and just stands there. Second, he shoots the same kraut later in the movie...while he's unarmed. Classy. See, I don't believe in guns of any sort, I think they're for cowards. I'm a hand-to-hand combat guy, if you can't get it done with your fists, you are a pussy, just like Upham.

9:40- The white ageless man Richard Alpert tells John Locke "You're going to have to die John." One of the five best LOST lines, the best line hands down is still "We have to go back Kate! We have to go back!"

9:50- My main man Desmond Hume finally gets some screen time. Desmond is the best character ever. I'm the only person I know that feels that way and I don't care. He rules. Faraday tells him that he is unique and special. Goddamn do I know how to pick talent.

9:59- Another reason why Hurley is the worst character on the show, after being found by Penny Widmore's boat he refuses to go along with the other 5 members of the Oceanic 6, in terms of lying about what happened on the island. I hate that guy, how can you trust someone who was stuck on an island for half a year and didn't lose a single pound. What a joke.

10:09- I hate to make a positive comment about Hurley, but seeing him buy a "I Love my Shih-Tzu" t-shirt reminds me of the summer of 1997 when I drove with my friends Ed and Alex to our Fraternity's summer leadership conference in Ed's grandpa's truck...which had a bumper sticker that said "I Love my Schnauzer." That week was hilarious, I've never seen 3 people reaach such rockstar status as we did over those few days. We were easily the coolest guys there. Man how things change, ahhhhh, memories.

10:12- Kate Austin sucks as a character, but if she wanted to consider you her son, even if she wasn't...would you care? Hell no, she is fine as hell. Her character did blow up her shitty stepdad though, that was pretty sweet.

10:18- During the commercial break there is a spot for the local ABC affiliate WSYX Channel 6 featuring their head news guy Gabe Spiegel. Does that sound like the name of the guy you want to get your news from? No. That sounds like the name of a guy who has to register as a sex offender whenever he moves to a new county. Here's how bad channel 6's ratings were, they had to combine with the local FOX affiliate for news to try to compete with the NBC and CBS stations...and combined they're still ranked 3rd...out of 3...two stations combined. Thats spectacular.

10:26- Flaming arrows? What is this? Braveheart, Gladiator? WTF. At least crybaby Neil takes one in the chest. Christ, the guy had been on screen for 2 minutes and I already wanted him dead. Maybe he got a DUI in Honalulu last week and the directors needed to kill him off, either way I'm fine with it.

10:43- Reason 2,741 to hate Hurley, he lets the cat out of the bag that the Oceanic 6 have been lying about what happened on the island to his mom. This guy is terrible.

10:48- Another Channel 6 commercial with Gabe Spiegel claiming they have the inside scoop on why United 1549 went down in the Hudson last week. No shit? You think it was the Canadian geese like they've been saying since day 1? Way to crack the case Sherlock. What's next? You have the skinny on who's burried in Grant's tomb? Keep up the good work Gabe! And, who names their kid Gabe without having the expectation of their kid getting pummeled daily until they're at least 16 or 17. And, if you're name isn't Gabe and you're trying to break into tv/movies, why the fuck would you change your name to Gabe? I would change my name to Humpy before I would change it to Gabe. Humpy Deagle. Deal with it.

10:50- Is Troy Polamalu Sayid's stunt double? For a split second their I thought he was going to intercept that needle from Jack and take it back for 6. Fuck me, why are commie Steelers present in every aspect of my life? What have I done to deserve this?

10:56- It's the last few minutes of the show, something big has to happen. Theres a woman working near some computers and she goes upstairs and Ben Linus is there to talk to her. She turns around and...and...it's Miss Hawking! They talk and we're led to believe that she's the puppetmaster pulling all the strings! I think my head is about to explode, I need to go to bed. Only 166 hours until the next episode!

A Tough Weekend- Part 1

2009-01-19T18:26:00.000-08:00

I'm not gonna sugar coat this one kids, this weekend was a pretty big kick in the jewels to your old friend Hoops. Who would have thought that sitting around the house last Friday and going to bed at 11pm would be the highlight of the past 4 days? Certainly not me, and I'm seriously doubting you thought so either. After all, I'm an international man of mystery who's slept in dumpsters and gotten drunk with kings (that's a Kid Rock reference to all of my Detroit readers)! The weekend should be my time to shine, but tragically not in this case. Lets start with Friday and work our way down the mountain of nonsense. And, come to think of it, Friday wasn't all that great either cause it was about 8 f'n degrees all day. Besides the weather though, I powered through work knowing that I didn't have to run that night. I preface any reference to my running in this or any past/future blog by saying in no way am I trying to compete with my friend Steve's blog about his training for the 2009 Louisville Ironman Triathalon. First, I am merely training in general for a full/half marathon in the near future whereas he is training for a certain event. Second, when I do a full marathon, it's only 26.2 miles, while the total distance of all 3 stages of an Ironman is over 14o miles. You do the math. Third, its a good idea for a blog, I encourage you to check it out and become a follower (he said he'd give me $5 for every person I got to subscribe). Back to Friday...it is generally a day off for myself as I work on building up my weekly 'long run' on Saturdays. So, I get off work and go home and get a good nap cause I had been out drinking til 2am the night before, good times! Upon waking up it was straight to Number 1 Chinese for some boneless spare ribs and hot & sour soup, but...upon placing my order...no soup for me! They're out of gdamn h&s! The cold weather strikes again, and this time it didn't involve me going feet over asshole on a public sidewalk. So ribs and an egg roll, we can deal with this. That combined with a few episodes of LOST season 3 and its off to bed.

Normally, Saturday mornings are my running clubs (Central Ohio Runners) group long runs. My attendance rate isn't very good as normally I'm too hungover and/or tired to show up. Today however, I woke up full of piss and vinegar only to look at the weather and see it's -5! Two words peeps: FUCK THAT! -5 at 8am on a Saturday? Yeah right, back to sleep for me. Brandon must have been tired cause he didn't wake up again until after noon! What a fantastic way to start the day, and a third person reference to boot! After a little breaky, it was time to head out for my long run of the week. Two weeks ago I peeked at 14, last week busted out 16, so the goal today was 18. Things were looking up as the mercury rose to 20 as I was getting ready to leave. Compared to the negative temps the past few days, this felt like a friggin' heatwave, 20 had never felt so good. The run was going good until mile 11 when a driver on a cell phone nearly hit me, thus causing me to change direction suddenly, thus causing me to fall on my ass....again. I need to clarify my previous Facebook status where I claimed I've slipped 4 times this winter. That is incorrect, I would consider 3 of the incidents as a 'slip', and 1 time a 'trip'. They're way different. Luckily for me, there was another car behind that asshole which appeared to have roughly 35 people in it, which all felt the need to point and chuckle as I layed on my stomach in a pile of slush. Seeing how I've already found myself in this position quite a few times this winter, I got up as if nothing happened and went on my way. 7 miles later I had met my goal and shut this running machine down, too bad I was about half a mile from home and my legs had decided to shut down cause when its very cold, you're sweaty, and you have to walk a while...things get bad. Long story short, part way home I had to cut open a fat person and crawl inside for heat, but after a while I got there. I'll get to Saturday night in my next post.

Here's the video of my favorite song of 2008, Kings of Leon's 'Sex on Fire.' Great song, terrible video. They're playing in Columbus next Tuesday....and tix on Stubhub.com are over $100 a piece, ridiculous. (Click here for the video, I was hoping to embed the video in the post but I guess you can't do that w/o having the vid saved to your cpu, sorry)

Mr. Plowed

2009-01-16T16:25:00.000-08:00

This is pretty freakin' depressing. Its barely half way through January and the weather already has me contemplating ways to kill myself. As I'm sure everyone knows, it is approximately -200 degrees in wintery Columbus, OH today, and that's without the wind chill factored in. This would be a tough week to be a homeless person; first off, you're homeless and you probably don't have a tv to watch next weeks LOST season premiere. Second, Christmas was a few weeks ago and you probably didn't get anything from anybody which is kind of depressing. Third, you probably didn't get invited to any bitchin' New Years Eve parties. There was probably no drunken make-out sessions at midnight with some floozie or early morning bouts of vomiting due to too much mixing of champagne and Gin & Tonics. Actually...if you're homeless you still probably had the vomit session except it was probably due to a- trying to smoke a paper bag cause you thought it was weed, b- too much Thunderbird, or c- getting the shit kicked out of you by some bum-hating yupsters. And fourth, ITS COLD AS ALL FUCK! Dear lord, it was -15 degrees farenheit this morning, -15! How the hell are you supposed to function when it's that cold? At work today I saw a bird fly out from under our roof and I couldn't believe the thing was able to survive. How can a little tiny animal survive without 3 layers of shirts, a jacket, jeans, a hat, and bitchin' winter motorcycle gloves? I have that stuff and was still thinking about driving into oncoming traffic today when I was outside.

There were two positive outcomes to this weeks wintery mix of weather. 1- I love to do donuts and drive sideways in the snow. I know its childish, but I love it. 2- Wednesdays massive snow fall allowed me to whip out approximately 300 Mr. Plow (For non-Simpsons fans click here)references to anyone I came in contact with throughout the day. Believe me when I say, I got quite a few odd looks over the 8.5 hour work day. Can you blame people for thinking I was half retarded? If we never met and the first thing I throw at you is a big "Mr. Plow, thats my name, that name again is Mr. Plow!" What would you do? You'd probably look at me like I had a bad case of leprecy as well. The best part was, the weird looks I got in the morning ended up being the fuel for the fire to keep the Mr. Plow song going. Most normal people would probably stop after their first 4 co-workers gave them the "I think he molests his neighbors cat" look. Not me, I kept the magic going. Oddly enough, I couldn't find any video's of that Simpson's episode or of the commercial Homer made for the company. Even more oddly, it was far easier to find the Plow King commercial with Barney and Linda Rondstadt.

Sooooo, speaking of crappy weather, I went running last night....OUTSIDE. I went out Wednesday night as well when it was cold (mid 20's I think) and snowy, and I struggled to do 7 miles because with the fresh 5 inches of snow I was basically shuffling the whole time and not actually running. I did 7 miles and was gassed. Then last night became a war of wills between Smart Me and Stupid Me. Smart Me said "Let's go to the gym and run on the treadmill." Stupid Me said "How many days will you be able to run when it's 4 degrees? You should do it just to see how bad it is." Long story short...foolish pride won out and Stupid Me was declared the winner. I departed the house with the thermometer reading 4 degrees at 5:12 pm EST wearing leg tights, 3 long sleeve shirts (including 1 mock turtlenect), a jacket, head sock, hat, and gloves. 90 minutes and 10 miles later I got home with the mercury topping out at 3 paltry degrees. I couldn't feel my hands the first two miles and contemplated ducking into the Holiday Inn on Lane Ave. until I got feeling back but I perservered. Here's the aftermath:
And yes, my eyes were basically frozen open at this point.

3&F Mission Statement

2009-01-13T19:27:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, we at Third and Forever need to issue a formal apology for the misinformation being disseminated on my Facebook profile. Apparently, an intern here at Third and Forever, LLC. with either a wild sense of humor or terrible grammer felt the need to mistype the name of this blog as thirdandforever.blogspot.com. In fact, as you loyal readers know, the actual site is thirdandforver.blogspot.com, which is a reference to the address of our corporate headquarters (at the corner of Third St. and Forver Ave. in beautiful Missoula, Montana). We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience. This error was pointed out by Follower #2 Kristen, who has a passion for grammer. For her diligence she will receive 20% off in the Third and Forever online store, be sure to check it out for all your mouse pad and customized cuff link needs.

Second, from here on in when we reference this site, we will refer to ourselves as 3&F in the written form. When discussing the site with devout followers and potential readers face to face, we will still refer to the site in third person as 'Third and Forever' and will refuse to use the first person pronouns such as I, us, or we (Kristen, if this is also grammatically incorrect please post an appropriate comment with corrections). We're pretty ethnocentric here at 3&F and are pretty pleased with our product so we have no problem referring to ourselves in the third person more than Ricky Henderson at a Ricky Henderson convention.

Third, like any worthwhile organization, we here at 3&F have a detailed mission statement which informs interweb surfers like yourself of our goals, beliefs, ideals, and uh well... our mission. Some organizations have mission statements that are numerous paragraphs and cover on a litany of subjects the group hopes to address. More acute parties will have their proclamation widdled down to a few sentences, while still being able to convey their point. We are probably more to the side of the latter. Below you will find 3&F's Corporate Mission Statement:

"At Third and Forever, LLC. we promise our fans, employees, and shareholders, that we will never
rest in the endeavor of attempting to pick up chicks, while working our hardest to leave the smallest
carbon footprint possible during our time in operation."

There you have it folks, sorry we weren't able to get that up in our initial post. After reading that, you're probably saying to yourself, "Wow, that's really commendable that they're that committed to the environment." Well, it's true. At 3&F, our first and foremost concern (after picking up lots of lovely ladies of course) is to protect the environment. For example, our office is completely paperless....almost. Instead we use the most high tech computers that contain insane amounts of such environmentally friendly elements as mercury, lead, chromium, etc. That's just our little gift to Mother Earth, after we've left the bar and quit hitting on tons of broads. Thanks for your time, talk soon!

2009- A Year of Hope

2009-01-04T18:12:00.000-08:00

Hello all and happy new year! You were probably thinking that 2009 was going to be a great year for numerous reasons, and now I drop this blog bomb on you. Boo Ya! Consider this your own personal Red Rider BB Gun that your dad just pointed out after you thought you had already opened all your gifts on Christmas morning. Except in this case the gift isn't a gun, its my personal insight and hilarity. And, instead of being hid behind the family's piano (like in A Christmas Story), this blog will be hidden behind the windows of porn you have on your Mozilla Firefox browser. Oh yes my blogosphere friends, 2009 just got a whole lot better than earlier imagined.

Obviously, everyone is optimistic about 2009 for various reasons. Reason #1- 2008 sucked horrendously for a lot of people in a lot of places, especially if you're over 70. The worldwide economic meltdown knew no boundaries and has affected everyone in some way shape for form. For this reason everyone is thinking...hey, 2009 can't be any worse (not a great reason for optimism, but we're clutching at straws here)...right? I'm not so sure about that but I'll pretend to be hopeful so you keep on reading and don't judge me as being a very negative person.

Reason #2 for optimism- Bush is out of office on Jan. 20. Why do I know this? Because the street vendors near my office in the semi-ghetto have the commemorative t-shirts to prove it. I think it's fairly safe to say that GWB has set for record for longest period of being a lame duck president. Most outgoing Heads-of-State have an accepted period after the prez elect is nominated where they kind of check out mentally and worry mostly about stealing anything that isn't nailed down in their publicly paid for house. Unfortunately Bush has just been doing this for about 6 years (I'm sure you thought I was going to type 8 years right there, but I cut him some slack, he didn't ask for 9-11-01 to happen...or did he?).

Reason #3- LOST starts airing new episodes again on Jan. 21. So let me get this straight...an African-American is going to be sworn in as President of the United States of America on the 20th...then new LOST episodes the next day? I might have sensory overload and my head might fucking explode! Until this last election my voting record was 0-2, at least now I'm at 1-2 (if that was my batting average the Yankee's would sign me for $30 million a year), so I was glad to get off the schnide (sp?), and I can't wait to get loaded during his inauguration and scream at Republicans at the bar like I was watching OSU pound Michigan and rub it in. That being said, for these two life changing events to happen on back-to-back days might be too much for me to handle. I hope I can make it through the whole first episode without this happening (if you don't click any other links I suggest you hit up this one, hilarious!).

Reason #4- My birthday is on February 10. Obviously my birthday takes place every year, regardless of the state of the world...but I just wanted to remind everyone of that so I could be lavished with gifts. And if I'm not lavished with gifts that means the terrorists have already won, and we don't want that now do we?

So there are 4 great reasons for why 2009 should/could be better than 2008. I have to admit though, another reason for my pessimism is that on New Years Eve I had pizza at the best pizza place in the world, yes, Myles Pizza in Bowling Green, Ohio, which also gets me excited (sorry, it is applicable). That event also brought about the closest instance of me punching a woman square in the face...but I didn't! I'll tell that story in another post (In no way, shape, or form does anyone associated with Third and Forever, LLC. support violence against women for any reason, even if they lose your pizza. Management suggests showing your displeasure by not tipping, not by throwing left jabs). That means '08 went out on an incredibly high note and set up '09 for extreme failure. BUT...BUT...BUT...we had leftovers which I brought home and warmed up in the oven the next day...which was Jan. 1, 2009! Everyone knows my motto: the best pizza is Myles Pizza, the second best is oven warmed Myles leftovers!

You're probably saying, "Hoops, isn't this a sports blog? You didn't bring up sports once." Partially true my friends, but as you'll find out this blog is more about this crazy thing we call life. Be sure to become a subscriber so you don't miss anything from this point forward, cause if you do...again, that means the terrorists have won. And none of us want that on our conscious.