A Patriotic Coupling

American Man

 

American Woman (ft. American Steed)

Little Boy, Pretty Girl, Awkward Photo

Awkward Family Photos is a go-to website for a bored-at-work afternoon pick-me-up.  Most of the "awkwardness" in the contributed photos derives from dated fashions or photos taken in our inherently most awkward years.  The site is good-hearted nostalgia where twenty to thirty years passing cures any cringe reflex.  We were all there along with the people in the photos.  We can look back at ourselves, laugh, and wonder what were we thinking.

A more contemporaneous photo caught my attention several weeks ago.  Five Hooters beauties surround a young boy who clearly doesn't want to be there:

"Is it over yet? I'm just here for the wings..."

I love that photo, because I was that little boy.  Twenty years ago my younger brother, my dad, his friend and son, and a couple of my uncle took a guy's weekend (with my aunt in tow) to watch Notre Dame football play Purdue (final score, ND 48-0).  Walking around campus in the run-up to the game, we passed two cheerleaders and we asked them to take a photo with us ("we asked" didn't include me).  I was placed next to the very pretty one with the early-90s big hair, who put her arm around my shoulder:

"Is it over yet?"

When I look back on that photo, I'm "smiling" more than I remember (it must have been politeness).  I vividly recall the over-whelming sense of full-consciousness of her hand resting on my shoulder.  I felt exactly what the Hooter's boy's face conveys.  What was I supposed to do?  Certainly not place my hand anywhere on her.  To cheesy middle-schoolers, pretty college girls are an untouchable caste.  I knew to lower my eyes in her presence and not meet her gaze.  In the context of such social asymmetry, the best that can be done is to stand stiff and hope the photo is taken as quickly as possible.

Afterwards my dad and uncles teased me "Ooh, she liked T.J., putting her arm around you!".  Today I wonder if she also felt a similar awkwardness ("what am I supposed to do?"), but her years of cheerleading better equipped her with the art of fake-smiling.  After unconveing this photo I attempted (unsuccessfully) to find a cheerleader's roster from that period, thinking I might be able to locate her online.  Maybe we both might have had a laugh.

Several years after this photo was taken would find me posing similarly with dates in formal dance photos.  It's a slow process to break the "rather-be-hiding" instinctive response.

Gooooooooooooo Irish!

Capturing the Zeitgeist: Superbowl Week 2013

Below is a word cloud created using status updates appearing on my Facebook timeline between Sunday, January 27th, 2013 and noon today.  This is what people talked about the week before Superbowl Sunday:

My Facebook Timeline, Jan. 27 - Feb. 3

A few remarks:

• I'm really surprised people say "just" so much.  Most everything else seems about right.
• I have over 300 friends, but (unsurprisingly) a disproportionate number do the vast majority of postings.  Withing that group, a select few are particularly long-worded, accounting for most of the text.
• I only collected text from status updates, omitting anything showing up in comments to other posts (I still have a day job).  A lot of text was thus omitted.  Also, most postings were non-text: pictures or links to articles.  I'd estimate most links were political.  Of photos, 70% were babies, 29.9% were "what I ate for dinner", and 0.1% was everything else.
• At one point my sense of Facebook postings was an endless cycle of "Can't believe tomorrow is Monday", "Can't believe it's Monday", "So don't want to go to work today", "at least the week's halfway over", "so happy tomorrow is Friday", "TGIF!!!  Is it time to go home yet?".  Repeat until retirement.  I was happy to see none of that this week.  

The Efforts We Never See, the Results We Do

Last month The New York Times Magazine featured Jerry Seinfeld in a short video entitled How to Write a Joke.  In it, Seinfeld deconstructs a single joke.  We are shown how each word is thoughtfully chosen based on how it contributes to the line's timing and sound ("Pop-tart" is just a funny word).  The video's take-away is that funny takes work.  Aside from Jerry Seinfeld's inherent talent, he works very hard at what he does.



Because some people make it look so effortless, I loved how this video reminds us that we never see the first draft.  For years I convinced myself I was just irredeemably a bad writer.  Not until grad school did I learn the guaranteed formula: write more than you need and keep editing until it's good.  My prior writing was bad because my first draft was my first draft and my final version was just my first draft plus spell check.  Better writing is actually easy: start early and revise, revise, and revise.  Maybe the talented people's first drafts are better than mine, but my seventh draft is certainly better than my first.  Revision is how the funniest jokes are written and the best films are made.  Pixar founder John Lasseter said in an interview "every Pixar film was the worst motion picture ever made at one time or another".  There's nothing special in Pixar's water: they just keep working on their bad projects until they're not bad anymore.

I thought of all of this as I was cleaning out saved text on my computer (an on-going New Year's resolution).  For years now I've kept a passage written by Joseph Priestly, an eighteenth-century Englishman writing on early scientific inquiry into electricity (among other pursuits).  Using the example of Isaac Newtown, Priestly points out that we give perhaps too much esteem because we only consider others' successes and never imagine their struggles.  This becomes a problem when we think there never were any struggles.  When we believe that success results from inherent talent (which we can't help) rather than hard work (which we can), we are debilitated when we needn't be.  While the Seinfelds', Pixars', and Newtons' products do owe something to talent, through continual effort we may perhaps go farther than we'd otherwise imagine, just only by using their same simple workplans. 

Joseph Priestly, The History and Present State of Electricity (1767):

MANY modest and ingenious persons may be engaged to attempt philosophical investigations, when they see, that it requires no more sagacity to find new truths, than they themselves are masters of; and when they see that many discoveries have been made by mere accident, which may prove as favourable to them as to others. …[I]t is a great discouragement to young and enterprising geniuses, to see philosophers…laying down the propositions which were the result of all their experiments, and then relating the facts, as if everything had been done to verify a true preconceived theory…  [P]erhaps, in no branch of science has there been less owing to genius, and more to accident...

WERE it possible to trace the succession of ideas in the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, during the time that he made his greatest discoveries, I make no doubt but our amazement at the extent of his genius would a little subside. But if, when a man publishes discoveries, he, either through design, or through habit, omit the intermediate steps by which he himself arrived at them; it is no wonder that his speculations confound others, and that the generality of mankind stand amazed at his reach of thought. If a man ascend to the top of a building by the help of a common ladder, but cut away most of the steps after he has done with them, leaving only every ninth or tenth step; the view of the ladder, in the condition in which he has been pleased to exhibit it, gives us a prodigious, but an unjust idea of the man who could have made use of it. 

THAT Sir Isaac Newton himself owed something to a casual turn of thought, the history of his astronomical discoveries informs us; and where we see him most in the character of an experimental philosopher, as in his optical inquiries…we may easily conceive that many persons, of equal patience and industry (which are not called qualities of the understanding) might have done what he did. And were it possible to see in what manner he was first led to those speculations, the very steps by which he pursued them, the time that he spent in making experiments, and all the unsuccessful and insignificant ones that he made in the course of them…our admiration would probably decrease. Indeed he himself used candidly to acknowledge, that if he had done more than other men, it was owing rather to a habit of patient thinking, than to anything else

The Electric Mr. Priestly

A Inauguration of Things Past

President Obama now taking the stage for his second inaugural address.  Roberta's reaction to camera pans of the mall was, "That's a lot of people!  I wouldn't want to be there!!"

I only had one chance to be there: President Bush's first inauguration in 2001, the only one coinciding with my five years in D.C.  Especially during that time in my life, I felt an importance to be present at major events, that absorbing life through television or print media was artificial, secondary, and inferior (in general, I now appreciate better viewing "seats" experienced through HDTV than the cheap seats twenty-something nobodys get, the comforts of controlled-climates, available bathrooms, a stocked refrigerator when I want it, and no pushy crowds).

I passed on walking down that year, even though I was only a mile from the parade route.  I recall the day was unpleasantly rainy and cold.  Moreover, that election was controversial.  With that taint I believed the experience would be unsatisfactory.  My first time should wait.

Instead, I watched the parade, a few minutes only, in Thurston's Dining Hall.  When the coverage focused on the protesters lining the motorcade route, I could only imagine the passengers' dismissive contempt for the people they sped past, windows-up.  This divide between our leaders and fellow citizens, so clearly manifested, was disheartening.

There were no major protests today, just less excitement than was present four years ago.  We're all a bit disillusioned, probably the Obamas included.

Both geographically and enthusiastically, I'm much further from attending an inauguration than that college kid munching brunch twelve years ago.  I'm certainly more apathetic now; not disregard the serious impacts of our elected officials and their decisions, but rather about the theatrics of political circuses.  The inauguration coverage playing in the background, I'm now watching a whole lot of people who love to be on TV, along with - even more troubling to me - occasional shots of faces in the crowds who love to watch those people on TV.

What is Sexy? (An Image Atlas Comparison)

Yesterday on Planet Fitness' treadmill I was stuck watching the very horrible Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines on TNT.  I hopped on towards the movie's beginning, when Kristanna Loken sees the Victoria Secret "What is Sexy" billboard and sexy-fies herself.  (And that's where the franchise jumped the shark.  To me, nothing beyond Arnold's thumbs-up in Terminator 2 happened).

Later last night, I read a New York Times Magazine blog post discussing the late Internet activist Aaron Swartz's collaboration, Image Atlas.  It's a fun little site.  Essentially, the way is works is that you enter a search term which is then translated into the primary language of several countries.  Several image search results are then returned to you grouped by country using the most popular search service in each respective county.  The idea of your grouped results is that you're given what you would see as if you were searching for the term in each county listed.  Thus, you're able to compare not only differences in the culture understanding of the term (assuming your word translated appropriately) but also how governmental censorship might affect which images you're given.

I searched several terms: happiness, justice, heaven - broad concepts.  Because I still had Terminator 3 on the brain, I also searched "sexy".  I was interested in how conceptions of aesthetics and beauty might vary by culture (also interesting, searching "beauty".  Very weird, searching "ugly)".

Below are ten image returns for "sexy".  Most Middle Eastern countries returned conceptual, non-person images, which I didn't include.  Interestingly, the United States and Spain returned two of the exact same images.  North Korea returned "No images found."

ImageAtlas(.org) return images for "Sexy" corresponding to U.S./Spain, Brazil, China, France, Israel, Kenya, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and U.S./Spain

My Missed Connections

Craiglist includes a "missed connections" listings, where locals describe brief encounters suggesting a potential for love, hoping the other person felt the same and will read the board and contact them.  Browsing the listings, I'm sure many are delusional, where the attraction was one-sided.  Still, the many other cases illustrate how much more love the world might have had if just one of the two were a little bit braver that day.

I believe this strongly.  So much in love is serendipity.  Roberta's mom, and my Aunt Barbara (I learned this Christmas), both met their spouses walking down the road when their future husbands drove by.  My parents met at a social club one ordinary night.  If either of our parents had instead stayed home that day, had gone at slightly different times, or haddn't glanced up a certain moment, neither of us would be here, I wouldn't be typing this right now, and we'd never make our own connection a quarter-century later.  Just a little nudge another way at a seemingly inconsequential momentum and so much life would be different.

I, too, have "missed connections".  While I have no regrets over how life turned out, I still characterize my teens and early twenties as particularly lonely.  My life suffered from lack of connections.  So many moments would have been richer if shared!

When I think of my missed connections, here is what I think of:

• At the end of high school freshman year, you were the first girl I ever learned had a crush on me.  We had never spoken, never had class together, yet you wrote "I love T.J." on your notebook.  Several people saw it, everyone told me, and actually many warned me against you (without explanation).  But, secretly, I had a crush on you, too, since I first saw you as an acquaintance's girlfriend.  You asked a friend to give me your number and we spoke several times.  You would never know, but things weren't ideal at home, so I never gave my house number to you.  Moreover, the timing was just bad.  We soon entered summer and lost touch.  When sophomore year started and we had classes together I avoided you.  But I still liked you.  This is probably the opposite of what you thought, and I'm so sorry.
• You were two sisters at Epcot.  Giggling, you approached and asked me whether I spoke Spanish.  I didn't.  I wanted to try.
• We met in the Typhoon Lagoon's wave pool.  You came crashing down on me in the middle of a wave series.  We tumbled in the wave, a tangle of limbs.  Afterwards, you faced me flirtatiously giggling; I, sunburn-red blushing and mortified I'd done something inappropriate, repeated "sorry, Sorry!", my face focused downwards while hurrying away.  You were incredibly beautiful.
• You were a horn player from another high school in the 1999 Orange Bowl halftime show, positioned down the line from me.  When our bands were brought to the the beach for a recreation day, you found me as we waited for the buses.  You asked your friend to take our picture.  I was rubbing sand off my feet, not my sexiest moment.  You asked us despite never speaking to me before.  I wish I had a copy of that photo.
• You lived down my hall freshman year of college.  We walked to discussion section together each Thursday that fall.  You insisted we keep that appointment.  I wasn't sure whether you wanted a connection or didn't want to walk alone.  Being shy, it was easier to assume the latter.
• You filled the empty seat next to me, halfway through the ride, on the shuttle bus home from the 2001 Inaugural Ball.  I was clearly dateless, silently despondent.  You said you were headed to Froggy Bottom with your roommates afterwards.  Was it an invitation to meet you there?  Sorry, I can't, just can't do bars.  If any other place.  I could barely see your face in the dark; my roommate called you gorgeous.  
• You sat next to me in an Oslo Internet cafe.  After you sneezed I instinctively said "Bless you" (in English).  You giggled as if I was a puppy peeing the floor, then rapid-fire typed (I assume the experience of my Yankee ill-sophistication).   I wish we could have talked.

How I'm Entering 2013

Happy New Year!  I began the new year as I ended the old, contended in reading:

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

This morning I finished Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve, which recounts the pre-Renaissance rediscovery of Lucretius' Epicurean poem "On the Nature of Things".  I've long loved Epicureanism's championing and prioritization on life simple joys, a theme frequently revisited throughout the work.  In one section, the book's hero, Poggio Bracciolini, after observing bathers in the German town of Baden, described his reactions to the bathers' happy lifestyle in a letter to a friend:

"I often envy their calm and I hate our perversity of spirit, for we are always searching, always hunting, always turning sky, earth, and sea upside down in order to make a fortune, content with no gain, appeased by no money.  We are terrified of future catastrophes and are thrown into a continuous state of misery and anxiety, and for fear of becoming miserable, we never cease to be so, always panting for riches and never giving our souls or bodies a moment's peace.  But those who are content with little live day by day and treat any day like a feast day.  They do not seek wealth that will do them little good but enjoy their own property and do not worry about the future; if anything goes wrong, they bear it optimistically.  And so they are enriched by this saying: 'He has lived, as long as he has lived well.'" 

I read Poggio's words at an apt moment.  As I develop resolutions and goals for the upcoming year, Poggio's reflections are helpfully orienting.

Getting Ready To Rumble...Oooh Yeah!

As I don't normally have cable, I'm exposed to TV I otherwise miss when I visit home.  This Thanksgiving I was fortunate to be treated to MSG Varsity's amazing Fall 2012 promo, depicting the greatest high school wrestling entrance of all time.

A former high school wrestler, I confirm this is almost perfectly my former high school fantasy brought to life.

Sanitized Democracy

One of the more important necessities for a vigilant, responsible populace is to remain suspicious of any aspirations to power  That includes, by definition, all those seeking higher public office. 

We benefit by being reminded of the phoniness of both politicians and their campaign's pizazz.  Thus I loved the implication of this photo I saw several days ago in The New York Times Lens Blog, speaking a thousand words, showing incumbent President Barack Obama receiving hand sanitizer after shaking hands with supporters at a campaign event last month.


photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times. caption: Mr. Obama got a squirt of hand sanitizer from a White House trip adviser Marvin Nicholson after shaking hands and posing for photos with a line of supporters backstage before he spoke at the Cleveland State University. October 5th, 2012

In the spirit of equal-time, I tried hard though in vain to find an analogous picture of Romney to juxtapose aside this one.  I believe he is equally eager to rush for the sanitizer after events.

A Note to my Future Self

There is a website, FutureMe, with a simple, very intriguing premise: write an e-mail timed to be sent to yourself in the future. Now, probably the most that can be accomplished with these e-mails to the future is a call to stay true to thine own self, to remember not become jaded or pretentious with age, and to be the kinds of adults our 10 year-old selves would be proud of.

What would be infinitely valuable - but is alas, impossible - would be to send a letter to the past, to our younger selves. Actually, earlier this year CBS's This Morning began a reoccurring segment based on that premise, where celebrities read hypothetical letters to their younger selves. So far, to my knowledge, Maya Angelou, Chuck Close, and Oprah have been featured.

As today marks closing ceremony of the XXX Olympiad, this session of regular posts will come to a close. I'm not sure when I'll return, but following traditional it will be at least again during the 2016 Olympics. I tried to image myself four years from now, what I want that person to be like, and I'm mailing the following letter to myself:

Dear Future T.J.,

In 2016, more than anything, my hope is that you are finding balance. You've just started a new job, a first job after grad school.  Be careful and mindful to keep a healthy perspective. You have a tendency towards workaholism; give your best for 40 hours but not a minute more. Don't let work bleed over into your other time. You're only getting paid for 40 hours and that's already too much time to lose. Although you've gained discretionary income, you've lost discretionary time. Money is one kind of freedon, but free time is another of which you now have less. With your time now more constrained, I hope that you're leaving time for yourself, for your health and your love of knowledge, continuing to learn through books, exploring art and the world.  There is more out there than you'll ever have time to experience, so don't waste a precious moment more than you have to on work. Whatever your career becomes, if any random person on the street doesn't understand an aspect of your job, it's probably not important enough to waste much anxiety on. Remember the past, and everyone who's ever done anything for you.  Pay forward the countless help you've received from your family, friends, mentors, and community. Roberta, especially, who you've been lucky enough to marry, has a good heart and kind soul. She likes you a lot. Remember all the support she's given you and how much color, warmth, and happiness she's added to your life. It's unimaginably better now than before she was a part of it.  Finally, of course, remember not to put too much stock in any advice I offer. You have the experience and developed perspective that only four more years of life could purchase. I only wish it were I that could receive advice from you. So for now, to a happy future: my best wishes, my best hopes, and my best regards, from 2012. - T.J.

My Grandparents as their Younger Selves

When home last Memorial Day weekend I was working on the desk in Scott's room and found a flash drive.  Curious as to what was on it, I plugged it into my computer and found an absolute treasure-trove of photos documenting my mother's family, her and her three sisters and four brothers, growing up in the 1950s and 60s.  I think originates from scanned photos my aunt made of what she found in my grandmother's house after she died in 2007.  Of course I copied all of them - there were literally hundreds of photos - to Skydrive.  Such things are priceless and now I have them forever.

While the photos were primarily childhood photos of my mother and her siblings, there were also a precious few of my grandparents from before their children were born.  Posted below are the two youngest portraits of them I found, my grandfather's Navy photo and a portrait of my grandmother from what would have been roughly the same time.  They wouldn't even have met yet.  It's a strange realization to me that since these photos were taken in the 1940s, they both would have been in their early 20s, younger than I am now.

My grandfather, Daniel (Navy photo)

My grandmother, Madeline (mid-1940s)

My grandmother especially - I can't believe how beautiful she looked.  I'm so proud.  It's also remarkable to me how I can see in her face then a blend of all the people who would become my aunts and uncles.

My Stolen Identity, and a Congressional Appeal

So, this happened:

I haven't mentioned it before but since late 2007 my younger brother Eric has with complete disregard been stealing my identity.  The worst part is not even what he did but when he did it - mere months after our youngest brother died, and even worse, he stole much more from our own mother, mere months after her son died.  Unfortunately, you can't choose your family.  Not surprisingly, there's something of an estranged relationship and I haven't spoken to him since 2008.  It'll be going on five years soon.

I have enough to write about the last four (almost five) years to write a book.  I'm only half joking.  Maybe one day when I have the time, and more importantly the courage to divuldge that much of my personal life.  Another reason to wait, unfotunately, is that my stomach tells me the last chapters of this story haven't been written yet.

While writing letters this morning to clean-up some of this most recent mess I was going through some files saved on my computer to pull supporting documentation - it's been incalculably helpful to keep everything and keep it organized - and I came across a letter I wrote to Congress dated December 28, 2009.  I think I sent a copy to both senators and my congressman.  At the time I was living in Atlanta, a broke graduate student unable to travel home, while fraud was taking place in Connecticut, New York, and even Nevada.  When I went to the police, most didn't know what to do with me.  It was a mix of advice of go to my home jurisdiction or go to where the fraud took place, always someplace else.  The old system of working through local police who are tied to their respective jurisdictions is clearly unsuitable for rectifying identity theft.  It's one thing if someone passes a bad check in your name two towns over, I was dealing with incidents two time zones over.  To their credit most police officers with two brain cells recognize this, and it's not their fault as their hands are tied by the existing rules.

Basically, the story behind this particular letter is that my brother obtained a duplicate copy of my driver's license which he was using for other fraud.  At some point, I believe he was pulled over for speeding and gave the trooper my copy instead of his own when asked.  Moreover, he didn't pay the fine, which resulted in my license being suspended.  Of course, that couldn't be solved over the phone.  I had to wait until I got home for winter holidays to go to court in New York, where the incident took place.  After waiting months I came to plead my case, a jerk prosecutor (maybe on a bit of a power trip) dismissively said he would see me in trial, without even hearing my story.  I should say here that there was an ending as "happy" as could be hoped for - I was sent back home in March for a job interview and, returning to court, had a much nicer, sympathetic prosecutor hear my story who instantly dropped all charges on my demonstrating evidence that a duplicate license copy was seized by police.  But, three months earlier, the whole thing was a headache given the distances, giving my frustrations and anxiety over my suspended license, the injustice of it all and my feelings of helplessness in the bureaucracy.  So when I could do nothing else, I could still write a letter.  I wrote to my representatives to appeal for...something, something else.  There had to be a better way.  Segments of my letter follow below (and I see now I did not edit it as well as I could have, but at that point, it was primarily about venting, more for me than for them...):

The Honorable ______
(Room #) (Name) Senate Office Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

December 28, 2009 

....

My very-similar-looking brother, Eric – who has been incarcerated since August on various fraud and larceny charges – obtained a duplicate copy of my driver’s license which he used to impersonate me in various bank fraud schemes.  To my knowledge I have cleared my name with the exception of one issue: in late 2008 Eric was pulled over for speeding in New York State and gave the trooper my license instead of his own.  He never paid the fine and I was only alerted to the infraction on my license when I received a letter from the DMV earlier this fall informing me my license is being suspended.  The situation is a nightmare for me.  Despite local police contacting the Port Chester (NY) court, the prosecutor insists that the case go to trial where it was essentially phrased that I needed to prove my own innocence.  I am very anxious because I am a financially-limited graduate student and the cost of returning to the area for the trial exceeds the cost of the infraction.

My local police, as I have mentioned, have intervened on my behalf to no avail.  One obstacle they have offered to the charges not being immediately dropped is that the infraction took place out-of-state.  This should not be hindering an innocent citizen’s clearance of charges; it is an embarrassment that an artificial boundary is impeding justice.  Given the intra-jurisdictional nature of the problem, I would think that the Federal Government could facilitate the resolution of such situations.  I am imploring you to propose or support legislation that would provide identity theft victims in cross-state cases a federal resource in which they could turn to for assistance.  Victims would be indebted to you and such legislation for relieving some anxiety associated with an unfortunate experience.  Thank you for time, and humbly I appreciate your support.

Needless to say, no bill has yet named in my honor.  Of the three congressmen I wrote I only got one response, which did little more than to reference an enclosed brochure on identity theft and advise me to check my records with the three credit bureaus.  So in regard to my concerns, the same as no response.

Yesterday at the Gym

I arrived at the gym ready to go at 5:50pm.

I planned a warmup run for 24 minutes at 8.2 (about a 5k), then go up to 9.0 at 21:00 for 2 minutes, and then run out the last minute at 8.5 - my usual warm-up. However, I accidentally hit the emergency off button at about 8:30. I restarted for16 minutes, but my left shoe came loose at 5:40, despite a double knot. I restarted for the last 11 minutes - up to 9.0 at 8:00 and then down to 8.5 at 10:00, but it's not the same as a 24 minute straight run.

On the television was a follow-up story about a soilder murdered in Boston last April.  What I understood is that his suspected killer fled to the Dominican Republic, and police were seeking help.  Not sure what help could be given, but perhaps there were other suspects?

After the run, I wanted to do squarts but the Smith Machines were occupied.  While waiting, I did three sit-ups sets on the sit-up machines that allow you to add weight plates.  I'm not sure how much weight was on the machine but I could do at most 10 reps, and by the third set only 5 or 6.

As the Smith Machines were still occuped, I started I started doing deadlifts with the 60lb weights.  This is the maximum this particular gym has.  My former gym's dumbells went up to 75lbs, which is what I would typically use for deadlights.  Yesterday, my forearms gave out before my upper back did - eventually it became too hard to hold the weight, even though my upperback wasn't tired yet.    So I felt like the point of the exercise was being lost in the weakness of my grip.

To work my legs and core, I did the exercise where you hold weights over your head and squat.  I did it first with 30lb dumbells but barely could go down and up holding the weights.  I quickly switched to 20lb.  My arms (specifically my left) gave out before my legs did, and only after a few reps - actually, it's the front of my shoulders which hurt me most today, I think from holding my arms steady as I squatted, just from those few repitions!

I started doing squats with 45lb. dumbbells, although I was sure I'd have the same problem as the deadlifts as not being able hold them before my legs fatigued.  Fortunately, after two sets - where yes, my arms did give out  - the Smith Machine behind me opened up.  It's so much better because you can rest a quasi-barbell on your shoulders, and so concentrate on your legs without being limited by your grip strength (or lack thereof).

I was pretty sure I would be not at maximum after the previous exercises, but immature below my age I foolishly I tried to squat as if it was my maxmimum.  I tried doing two 45lb plates (two on each side) and almost broke my back. I only did three before I decided it wasn't worth the safety risk.  I switched a 45lb plate for a 25lb, did about 8 reps for two sets, then replaced the 25lb plate with a 10lbs and did two sets more.

Yesterday was supposed to be about hips, so I continued the theme to then do hip lifts - where you kind of get in a sit-up position and thrust your hips towards the ceiling (yes, it's embarrassing, so I went off in the corner by myself).  I did about 40 reps three times, and my butt went numb by the end  There was also a puddle of sweat on the matt after.

Finally, I did rows with cable using the grip where your hands are close together, first at 140lbs, then 120lbs, and then 2x 100lb.

Lastly, to cool down and loosen out, I ran - shuffled! - for ten minutes more on the treadmill afterwards.  I left sometime between 7 and 7:30, because Wheel of Fortune was on the television.


{I mention all this to record it for my older self, not to brag or anything, as in fact I don't feel I have anything to brag about.  The feeling I have is that I'm lifting less with much more difficulty than I could ten years ago, that clearly getting old.  I have to accept at some point I will (or already have) hit a peak in terms of physical strength.  I'm dissapointed that I couldn't remember specifics of repitition counts or didn't have the foresight to bring paper to record better.  I just wanted to record, on one random day at age 31, what I could physically do.  If it ever were more in the past, inevitably, at some point in the future it will be much less.}

Our Own Private Hells

An image I love, so encouraging, is a blatantly out-of-shape person exercising.

It must have been over ten years ago but I vividly remember an overweight middle-aged man shuffling down Westport Avenue early one morning and the look on his face was pain. It was struggling, but he was doing it. I'm sure he would have preferred to stop, but he was doing it. He knew he probably looked ridiculous, but he was doing it. He knew he should be doing it, and he was doing it.

To me, it was beautiful. I was awe-stuck and inspired.

Some (immature) people mock those struggling through exercises, and they're the worst kinds of people. It's especially cruel to disparage the out-of-shape, who may be so hanging by a thread for throwing in the towel.

There's a certain kind of person that goes to the gym to show off the fitness they already have. If the requisite for improvement is exercise to fatigure, then we should all be equalling falling out of the doors after, regardless of our starting level. In spite of personal cardio machine TVs, the massage chairs, and the air conditioning, the whole inescapable point of exercise is on some level to make ourselves uncomfortable.

Sometimes, it's a struggle for me just to finish my hour on the treadmill, just to breathe in the moist, swampy air. To convice myself I won't vomit. If I'm dieting, I'm cranky and consumed with just wanting to eat. Wiping boogers and slobber on my arms, I look to all my fellow treadmillers stomping along in their 8x3, self-imposed torture chambers. Many of us are suffering. It may be the hardest part of our days - just as draining as if we were prey running for our lives. If we're literally on the edge of our physical capacities, how could it be worse? It's amazing, when you think about a gym, all the person who are silently enduring their own private Hells. Struggling to take one more step, stretch one more inch, make one more rep, when the pain is unbearable and we imagine how comfortable quitting would be.

With these thoughts in mind I absolutely loved Nike's "Find Your Greatness" commercial than's been running recently. It recreates the man I saw running that morning years ago, clearly in pain, but doing it, anyway, for himself.

In Which I Enter the 2012 Olympic Quad-Off

Since at least high school I've always had big thighs. Strong, but big. Buying pants was difficult. In the 90s you were labled gay if your pants were any less than falling-off-your-waist baggy. Additionally, my big thighs were attached to what the other guys dubbed my "girl's butt". Getting changed for gym or weighing-in for wrestling were always embarrassing. Roberta says that they were all just jealous, that such assets on men are prized in Brazil. I only I had been born there instead, it could have all been so different.

I wondered what sport my legs would be most valuable for. Well, of course they'd be useless in all of them given my complete absence of any athletic ability.

On Sunday, this photo flew around the Internet, showing German Olympic sprint cyclist Robert "Mr. Thigh" Förstemann surpassing teammate Andre "Gorilla" Greipel in the "2012 Olympic Quad-Off":

German Cyclist Robert Förstermann Clearly Wins the 2012 Olympic Quad-Off

Roberta thought the image was photoshopped. I figured the Olympics is full of genetic freaks, anyway, and certainly those cyclists work their thighs. This would be the logical consequence.

Yesterday morning The New York Times published an article featuring Förstermann (inspired by the quad-off photo) entitled "Thigh-Popping Success on a Bike Lies in the Quads". Interestingly, the article linked to a blog post specifying the proper technique for measuring a thigh's circumference, and also listed a few athletes' measurements:

• Förstermann's thighs measure 34 inches (bigger than his waist, incidentally)
• Chris Hoy, a British cycling sprinter who collected his fifth gold medal on Sunday, has 27 inch thighs
• Polled athletes considered the minimal acceptable thigh circumference to be 23.6 inches. 

I could barely wait until I got home to learn how I, a mere-mortal, stacked up to Olympians. So, more or less: 24 and one-quarter inches. At least over the Olympic threshold! As I'm sure my lung capacity is much below the Olympic threshold, I doubt I'll be making any appearances in Rio de Janeiro, four years from now.

Still, I always loved riding a bike. I haven't ridden in a year or so, and then another year before that, so scared was I after a bad poison ivy episode I got on the Blackstone River Bikeway when I first moved to Rhode Island. I already planned to bring my bike to the shop this week for repairs to make the trek up to Lexington and Concord before the summer ends. Perhaps this photo is timely - motivation? I'll tape a photo of Förstemann's legs to my bedroom mirror to stare at before I go to the gym in the morning. Mr. Thigh wins the Quad-Off this year, but maybe we'll see you in Rio!

The Entirety of my Tweeting Experience

Around 2010 I finally joined Twitter. From certain people I have found a constant stream of "isn't that interesting?" items I might not have otherwise seen, several of which are good enough to pass on. While I primarily use Twitter to read conten, I have made attempts to, in the short form, recreate the purpose of this blog. I never enjoyed this. The 140 character limit is too constraining - if I'm the only person reading what I wrote, I might as well have more freedom to write. Until I become famous (and gain a million followers) I think I'll discontinue tweeting and stick with here as the primary medium to record my goings.  Bu,t I did want to also consolidate (and back-up/record) all my previous tweets into this space.

What follows is the entirety of my tweeting history - all eighty tweets in reverse chronological order going back to my first, "Whole Foods' Oreos are so much better than real Oreos..." back in October, 2010. Links are provided for context...

Silent No Longer: Cauliflower Ear

"Don't worry about your faces, none of you will ever be models" - a constant refrain from our wrestling coach. The purpose was to motivate us to use correct form (face close to the opponent's body) during a take-down drills without concern for the inevitable wear and tear on our faces (actually, one of us did become a model and soap opera star).

Over four years of wrestling I experienced all kinds of maladies: jammed fingers, split lips, a torn ankle, and an assortment of contagious skin infections.  The one I dreaded most, however, was cauliflower ear, a puffy disfigurement of the ear. I was certainly having no luck with the ladies in high school, and I didn't need any more marks against me. Is anything more important to 15 year-old?

Given the daily wear of intense practices, the inevitable finally happened. One night I glimpsed in the bathroom mirror with a growing knot in my stomach a definite puffiness. Even me.

At least, it could have been must worse than what I had - one night in bed after a prior wrestling practice I touched to where by upper ear joined my head and found blood - by ear was literally being torn off.

Other afflicted wrestlers spoke of going to the doctor to get their ears drained - I was never sure what exactly was filling the ear - and at least a couple times I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, poking my ear with a pin. Nothing came out, but I had heard there was only a short time window for treatment. Afterwards I could only focus on the preventative and I henceforth always used protective headgear at practice.

I just checked in the mirror, and sixteen years later I still have the faded signs: my right ear is definitely less "defined", with a bit more puffiness in the upper part of the ear lobe. Luckily, you can only really tell if you immediately compare one ear to the other - by itself it doesn't look so out of the ordinary. Moreover, as I move into my thirties, there are so much other aging-related wear that my ear is, in the scheme of things, small potatoes.

I was pleased to see the video NBC hosted in which USA wrestlers talk about cauliflower ear. Even within the elite, it is seen by some as either a disfiguring scar or a badge of honor, but it is so common that it's just accepted as going with the territory. As Jordan Burroughs says at the end of the NBC segment, "Once you get it you're like, screw it, I'll just keep it for the rest of my life".

I smiled with a certain nostalgia when he added, "I just can't be a model".

Matching the Soul to the Sport

Of course, different body types are more favorable to certain sports. A small man would have difficulty in basketball as a large man would have difficulty in jockeying. It is also just as true that certain sports fit better with particular personality types.

In some capacity during my youth I was involved in two contact sports: football and wrestling. Neither was ever a good fit: then as now I'm nothing if not confrontational. Athletic ability aside - in which I was certainly lacking - I never had the requisite desire to hurt my opponent. Instead, I only felt empathy - here was another kid just like me, who was probably swept up in winds larger than he was which landed him across from me - maybe playing for his dad's acceptance, his peers acceptance, or like me, both. In that realization, how could I want to hurt him? He did nothing to me. Instead of a blood lust, I was nauseated by guilt. My coaches or teammates, on the other hand, actively encouraged the desire to hurt. Undoubtedly this explains how I often viewed my teammates to be bigger bastards than the kids on the other side. And that view extended outside the team: "Get mean! Get tough!  Why don't you go out there and hit somebody?! You'd rather play in the band with all the queers and fags". I heard that at least every week from my father, off-season included.

At least in football, you are just one element of a team and are obscured to anonymity by a masking helmet and large padding. Wrestling had an additionally unpleasant, mano-a-mano element, focusing the center of attention on just two people during a match. Even more than being non-confrontational I was then, as now, extremely introverted. All those eyes that would be on me! I hated the thought. At tournaments I hoped to get called to the small mat, off to the side, where maybe no one else would even notice that I was wrestling.

Looking back, how else might it have been? Was there a sport more geared to my personality? There is a scene in Grease where Danny Zuko successively tries out basketball, where his aggression prompts the coach to push him towards wrestling, where that "he's a hitter" prompts the coach to push him towards baseball, and finally, it is decided that long-distance running, alone and solitary, would fit best. I deeply wished a knowledgeable adult would have taken me aside, working with me to find a sport tailor fitted. I fantasized that both athletic glory and my happiness were only a matter of match.

What could it have been? A non-contact, team sport, in which I'd be indistinguishable from the other players. I'm thinking crew? I'm thinking bobsleigh?

The Lives of Others

City living is always quasi-communal. It's inevitable, our lives' spheres are larger than the tiny apartments we're cramped into. We see our neighbors when glance from our windows, we smell our neighbors when they cook their dinners, and we hear them too often to ever be without earplugs.

When I lived in Washington and New York, my neighbors were close indeed. In New York, my (perpetually broken) bathroom window was arm's length from the corresponding bathroom window of the building next door. Perilously, the other bathroom was always occupied; disturbingly, its occupants (plural) were always in conversation; unfortunately, the conversation was always in an impenetrably foreign tongue. More positively, before our Wi-Fi was installed, we benefited from the unprotected network named "Denize", and over dinner discussed how to best repay the unknowing altruist we nicknamed Denise (sadly, we never found her).

Last month I moved to denser Cambridge, MA. A selling-point when I saw our future apartment is that it is on the top (fourth) floor - no creaking floorboards, heavy steps, or moving furniture from above. Typical city sounds aside, the apartment is blissfully quiet.

My neighbors are still there, however, just in other ways. Where I live is actually a group of buildings under the same landlord, which are close enough that I can easily peer into the rooms opposite mine. Here's what I've experienced so far:

• The male neighbor whose door faces mine, Apartment 44 is passionately arguing politics when I leave for work at 7:15am. The topic is the shooting massacre at The Dark Knight Rises premier in Colorado. He gets the New York Times delivered daily. I only have Sunday delivery.
• The female neighbor who I share a kitchen wall with I've heard while exiting the kitchen back entrance to take out the trash. She consoles her female friend to accept the lack of quality, dateable men their ages.
• The neighbors I most often see live in the apartment across from our kitchen window and two floor downs. There is a pretty young wife constantly in their kitchen. She is always cooking. Presumably its for the middle-aged man who occasionally joins her. From my vantage point he is much below her league - overweight and hairy, which I know because he most often appears shirtless.
• Directly across from our kitchen window is a young lady. She cooks dinner 7-8pm (as do we), and then eats in her kitchen, alone in a chair.
• An occupant of the corner apartment opposite our bedroom's - it would belong to the apartment of the women who eats alone - I saw once when I sat up in bed at night. She walked away (I could not see her face) from her half drawn blinds, in her underwear. I immediately laid down again to give her privacy. Her body type was heavier than the young lady I see eating dinner.
• Not directly across the way from our living room but the room to the right lives a blonde young lady. There is a perfect line of sight between her on her couch and me at my desk. We haven't made eye contact yet. I'm sure it will be awkward when we do. I try to avoid looking out that window an unavoidably into hers.
• The aprtment directly across from our living room, one floor down, is filled with plants and furniture, is always lit, and is always empty. I fear a year from now an elderly resident will be found mummified.
• The other rooms are fainter to see into. A couple apartments have large-screen TVs. I've only seen ESPN.
• Many of the current or former residents were physics and finance majors. Their textbooks fill the shelves of the lending library bookcase in the basement by the washing machines. The lending library is more accurately a textbook graveyard, for materials easier disgarded than packed on moving day.  There is also a copy of Perfectly Normal: Living and Loving with Low Libido, by Sandra Pertot, PhD.
• Although I can't see it, in the afternoons you can hear someone in the building block across the street practicing scales on a piano.
• Directly across from me, but one floor down, lives a cat. It likes to look at me from over a double window fan in the apartment's kitchen. We've engaged in brief staring contests. It's so-far the only neighbor I've yet to make eye-contact with, the only neighbor who knows I'm also looking out.