neild

So today I had training with the ever-helpful and überzealous Ryan, and it was a fairly easy workout. I think he's afraid of hurting me. So after the kettle bell swings, TRX band rows, step-ups, bench presses, planks, and bosu ball balances, we concluded with my usual five minutes on the rowing machine. I put my towel on the seat, strapped my feet into the footrests and pushed off. Except that my towel jammed in the mechanism under the seat and the rowing machine came to a dead halt. Ryan tried to remove the towel, but my ass was planted too firmly on it, and it just wouldn't budge. I tried to lift myself off of the seat, but didn't have enough strength, so I toppled over onto the floor, my feet still strapped into the footrests, flailing helplessly. Ryan had to pick me up by the armpits and plant me back on the seat. Ryan is strong like ox. We laughed. Oh the hilarity and the embarrassment! I'm sure I'm the only man who ever fell off of the rowing machine no more than four inches off the ground. I certainly hope the hidden cameras at the gym didn't catch that one!

"Captain" Lou Albano was a fixture in pro wrestling for 30 years since, as part of the tag-team "The Sicilians," he won the U.S. Tag Team Championship in 1967. In the early 1970s, Albano transformed himself from a heavyweight wrestler into the brash, bombastic manager Captain Lou Albano. With a quick wit and a grating personality, Albano became wrestling's most villainous manager.

In the early 1980s, Albano appeared in Cyndi Lauper's music videos for her hit songs "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," "She Bop," and "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough." Capitalizing on his success in the music industry, Albano began appearing in television and film projects. In the late 1980s, Albano appeared in Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling, 227, Miami Vice, Brian De Palma's Wiseguys, and the 1987 wrestling movie Body Slam.

In March 1989, on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, Albano had his trademark beard shaved on the air in order to star as the iconic video game character Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. He starred in live action segments during interludes of the Mario cartoon, as well as providing the voice of his animated counterpart.

In his heyday as a fatguy wrestler (billed height and weight: 5'10", 350 pounds), Albano was majorly hot. But during the 1990s he shed 150 pounds following a health scare. In May 2005, he suffered a heart attack but later recovered. In 2008 he released his autobiography, Often Imitated, Never Duplicated, with the foreword written by Cyndi Lauper.

Born in Rome, Italy, Albano was one of five children. Albano's brother, Carl, taught health for 32 years at Ridgewood High School in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and in his lectures often used his brother Lou as an example of the difference between crazy and unique.

I saw him wrestle in the Boston Garden once. I can't remember when that was, probably some time in the 1980s, but I remember I went JUST to see him. He died at age 76. He was a trooper.

Look who has a new varsity jacket! Thanks for the tip, Muffin Man!
( Look! )

Saw Owl City at the Lansdowne Pub, and it was a blast. MUCH more congenial than KMFDM. This is MY kind of music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI4JLa0hbUw

I think this is the funniest thing since Robot Chicken.

The Twilight Zone created and hosted by Rod Serling ran its first episode on the CBS network 50 years ago today, October 2, 1959. A.Ma.Zing.

Let's hear it for William T.G. Morton!

Hip-hip!
Hip-hip!
Hip-hip HOORAY!


Not excited yet? After everything William T.G. Morton has done for you? How soon you forget! Because it was on this day, September 30, in the year 1846 that William T.G. Morton, a Boston dentist, demonstrated publicly for the first time the use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic. He performed a painless extraction of an ulcerated tooth from the merchant Eben Frost. I bet old Eben was mighty grateful!

Just two weeks later on October 16, Boston surgeon Henry Bigelow arranged for a demonstration of ether at the Massachusetts General Hospital. At this demonstration Dr. John Warren painlessly removed a tumor from the neck of a Mr. Edward Abbott. There is a monument commemerating the event in the Boston Public Garden near Arlington Street. The inscription reads:

"To commemorate the discovery that the inhaling of ether causes insensibility
to pain first proved to the world at the Mass. General Hospital in Boston
October A.D. MDCCCXLVI"

It's interesting to note that at first ether was called "Letheon" after the mythological river of Hades; those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness.

So, the next time you listen to the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated," mumble a prayer of thanks, however incoherent, to old William T.G. Morton. He has enhanced all our lives immeasurably!

I have a BGMC performance after work today, so I came to work dressed. This is what I usually wear to church these days, instead of a suit. The blazer is a little big, but it's OK. My office has nice windows with a view of the office park and the beginnings of our splendid fall foliage.
( See me, feel me, touch me, heal me )

I saw the metal band KMFDM at the House of Blues in Kenmore Square last night, September 26, and it was an experience. This kind of music is really not to my taste. If there's no melody and no harmony, I'm really not interested. Basically, the music is all about percussion and angry lyrics, the more offensive the better. The drummer was definitely the star of the show. And I can see why he has the biceps he has. Man, did he get a workout! The band comprises five members: two vocalists, two guitarists, and the drummer. One of the singers is a chick. That makes it more interesting—it takes only one chick to balance a stage full of dudes.

Traditionally, the roots of their genre is industrial rock, but I would say they are more speed metal now. Very abrasive, oppressive, and LOUD. I had to wear earplugs. And one hour was all I could take.

But it bought a nifty t-shirt, which I will wear happily.

The opening night (September 21) audience greeted the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Tosca with resounding boos! Opera fans can be more vicious than sports fans: sometimes they are out for blood. Just goes to show you that it's not all top hats and croutons.

Who is this adorable little boy?

Yup, that's me. On the left I was age 4. And I still comb my hair exactly the same way. In the middle I'm maybe 5, and on the right I was a bit older, maybe 7 or 8. Totes adorbz, right?

Well, my birthday is September 19 and I was born in 1950, so that makes the math pretty easy to do. I put together a few pictures of myself through the years, so feel free to look, laugh, and comment!

( Read more )

Nero	Nico

Sometimes when I’m dissatisfied with my life the way it is, I take comfort in pondering the fate of Nero and Nico, two people who had little in common other than their wrong-headed aspirations.
( Read more )

Hey everybody, I have a new little friend, and his name is Joplin.

He really is little. I'd say he's about three and a half feet tall ...

( Meet Joplin! )

In-the-trenches experiences

Use in a sentence:

We not only understand the policy-level implications and challenges faced by both highway and transit agencies to integrate livability and environmental justice considerations into transportation practice, but also have in-the-trenches experiences at state, regional, and local levels to understand the importance of cross-jurisdictional collaboration to achieve outcomes.

"In-the-trenches experiences"! This ranks with "boots on the ground" as one my favorite militaristic metaphors. Who makes this stuff up?

Star date September 8, 1966

The science fiction show Star Trek premiered on the NBC television network, launching a media franchise that has since created a cult phenomenon and has influenced the design of many current technologies. Thanks, Wiki.

And still boldly splitting every infinitive in the universe.

Renowned Wagnerian opera singer Hildegard Behrens died recently in Tokyo, Japan while on a tour of recitals and master classes. She was acclaimed for her interpretations of Wagner's Ring operas as well as Strauss' Salome and Puccini's Tosca. Perhaps most famously, she was hit in the head by a piece of falling scenery during the Immolation Scene in a "live" telecast of the Metropolitan Opera's Götterdämmerung in the 1980s. Luckily, the show had been taped three times, so the technicians were able to edit out that unfortunate mishap. She was a trooper!

In the picture at the right she is doing her Salome thing in a 1977 performance at the Salzburg Festival. Not only did she have do to the Dance of the Seven Veils, she had all those damn steps to negotiate!

Maybe I'm late to the game for posting about this, but there were two events in August of 1969 that still have an eerie resonance today: Woodstock and the Manson Murders.


Woodstock Music & Art Fair (billed as "An Aquarian Exposition") was held on a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, 43 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969. ( Read more )

Traffic is fascinating.

Not convinced? Try browsing through Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) [Knopf, 2008]. Aside from the fact that traffic affects all of us, what makes it interesting is that, not unlike the stock market with its ups and downs, the phenomenon of traffic seems to have a huge psychological component divorced from the hard engineering facts of highway design. And in the process of discussing traffic and its ebbs and flows, Vanderbilt uncovers a lot of paradoxes and counterintuitive truths about many of the assumptions we all make when we drive.

( For example, )

These are just a few of the fascinating details culled from Tom Vanderbilt’s book, which is chockablock with similar insights. For anybody who drives this book is a must-read!

August 6 is day of special significance for me, with three unrelated but coincidentally harmonious associations: the Feast of the Transfiguration, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, and the death of my father in 1990.

August 6, in the Christian calendar, is the Feast of the Transfiguration. The story is related in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 17:

And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

It is depicted in this famous painting by Raphael:



I always thought there was a strange harmony in the depiction of Jesus transfigured on Mt. Tabor and the picture of the Hiroshima bomb. Both convey the image of a blindingly white light, a bright cloud, and an awesome, ethereal unreality.

Also, this day in 1990, my father died in his sleep. Lying beside him, my mother was awakened by his death rattle. He was rushed to the hospital but never regained consciousness. He was 77 years old. I was not present, of course, but my mother called me the next morning and woke me up to tell me the news. It was Monday morning, and I had a hangover. Ever since then I have had a phobia of early morning phone calls.

Later in the week, at the get-together after the funeral, a friend of my father’s, whom I had never met, said to me, “Your father had a special spot in his heart for you.” Thanks, Dad, I would never have guessed.

OK, here's a good one: According to a 2008 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee (who are these people and who pays their salaries?), the health effects of daily walking were touted as follows:

Relative to less than 30 minutes per week of walking, 1.5 hours per week of walking provides a 20 percent reduction in total mortality, while 7 hours per week gives a 40 percent reduction in total mortality.

Relative to less than 30 minutes per week of walking!? What is the population who falls into this category? Good God, any normal person must walk at least that much just getting up and going to the bathroom! Clearly, the only people who don't walk 30 minutes in a week must be either: 1) bedridden, 2) comatose, or 3) in a wheelchair. I feel compassion for all persons in these categories; but, honestly, I don't think it's fair to compare the mortality of the normal, ambulatory community to this group.

If you want to delve into these recommendations in detail, a link to the full report is here. But I would recommend printing the pdf (683 pages) and doing curls with it.