Dancing (with Yourself)

Let's get this party started already.

The Shoes - Time to Dance
Niki & The Dove - The Fox
Chairlift - Met Before

...And You're Lazy, Too!

Have I ever told you that I'm extraordinarily lazy?* If not, the picture above should dispel any notions to the contrary. As an adorable little girl's sixth birthday rapidly approached, I decided against a traditional card, opting for something digital instead. To achieve this goal, I taped six sheets of paper to a wall, and as you can clearly see, composed a rather colorful birthday message, though there was much more to the process than that. Actually, what I did was paint each letter, take a shot with my camera, paint another letter, take a picture, repeat, repeat, repeat (repeat) until I had enough material to create an animated gif, which can be seen below.

Everything written thus far may not suggest laziness but here's the catch: her birthday was on May 28th and the picture at the top of this post was taken yesterday.* Seriously. When it comes to stuff one can put off till tomorrow, call me sensei.


* In college, I'd eat ravioli straight from the can just to avoid the arduous tasks of a) having to microwave that shit and b) cleaning the dish afterward.
** I guess it should be mentioned that I've never been huge into posters or, for that matter, wall fixtures of any kind. The last time I had something on a wall, Duran Duran was hip and The Monster Squad was new. In other words, if something goes up these days, rest assured it's going to stay up.

Six Shots till Summation: Rage in a Cage

Werewolf in a Women's Prison (2006)

You may be thinking to yourself, Women? Werewolf? Prison? Awesome! and you'd be correct -in theory, at least- because everyone loves exploitation films but alas, ideals and reality don't always click as well as, say, Harrison Forbes and dachshund genitalia. This film is one such example of that sad fact. For a B-movie it's not all that bad, but when I see a title like Werewolf in a Women's Prison I expect that shit to be golden like King Midas' feces. On the upside, it's refreshing to see a werewolf willing to hit the gym seven days a week just to play a lupine Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Hey, have I mentioned that the werewolf in this film is totally ripped? Because it totally is.

Free, Agency

Mascot

Lovable lab, or stone-cold killer? Decide for yourself yet either way, this dog is now, officially, the best thing since sliced bread. But hey, you say, sliced bread isn't all that impressive and while I'm sure you feel that way, Pep told me to tell you that being a dog sentenced to life in prison is, in fact, much more impressive than getting one's car washed or whatever else you mentioned on Facebook today, so go eat some sliced bread and stop criticizing me already.

Same Title, Different Song X

Today's competition is a monster; specifically, a genetically engineered beast of a match-up designed by top Soviet scientists exploiting the very best in sports, sport-based, and sporty technology. To sum things up in a single word, I give you...


DRAGO!


On the slight chance that you actually grew up in a place like the Soviet Union, North Korea, or Newfoundland (and thus had no access to popular culture) here's five of the greatest minutes in cinematic history to help you get up to speed.



Now that your life has been enhanced by 53.5% you're ready for today's music. First up, Australian electronic band Cut Copy's single, 'Hearts on Fire', followed by the nostalgia-fueled juggernaut produced by John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band. Stallone would be proud.

Cut Copy - Hearts on Fire
John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band - Hearts on Fire

Trivia
Back in 1988, PK's very own Harrison Forbes trained for weeks in the cold Burlington wilderness (climbed mountains, lifted ox carts full of elderly people, got shouted at by his dead friend's trainer, etc.) for the sole purpose of opening a jar of spaghetti sauce while shouting PREGO! True story. 

Time Will Tell (Mesh)

The third post I wrote on this (hallowed) blog back in 2005 was about the Miami Heat, and Dwyane Wade specifically. Going way, Wade back, I found the fourth paragraph interesting:

LeBron? I'm not ready for that one yet. I don't want to go there. Ask me in a year or two. LeBron right now is still more tentative than Wade. He shoots the 3-ball better, but his drive isn't as smooth as DW, his J not as pure. But he's 3 years younger. Perhaps if 'Bron played a year or two in college and they were closer in age we could critique them fairly. But we can't. The fact is that Wade, in his second season, is simply the better player. Barring an injury on either side, it's going to be fun watching them both and debating who's better.

For me, it's been more fun in 2012 watching them play together, watching them win the 2012 title together. One thing is certain, though: Wade was the better player in '06, James the King Shit of Fuck Mountain in '12. LeBron's 2012 Playoffs performance was absolutely, incredibly, amazingly, abcredimazing. It was legendariblimazing.

As a Miami Heat fan, that's been both easy and, at times, weird to digest. I love Dwyane Wade more than I've loved any basketball player (John Starks is a close second). Hell, I named our dachshund, Flash, after him. When LeBron signed with the Heat in the summer of 2010, I was elated; who wouldn't want the best basketball player on the planet signing with their favorite team? Still, the question lingered: "How are Wade and LeBron going to mesh?"

Answer: "Sometimes hot, sometimes not."

Regarding the James/Wade dynamic, Bill Simmons made a salient point the other day:

Basketball doesn't work that way, for the same reason you don't need two transcendent lead guitarists for a rock band.

The one-two James-Wade punch worked against Indiana with Bosh out, but Simmons is right; someone has to lead, and someone has to defer. As much as I love Dwyane Wade, LeBron had to be the captain of the ship if the Heat were to win another title.

He was, they did, and now South Beach has another hero, a Superman to stand tall next to its Flash.

Woof.

Children's Literature

How to draw an arrow:

Start with this:

>>

Then, do this:

---

Finally, finish with this:

>

Then you have this:

>>--->

And now you're ready to hunt.

See how easy that was?

Time of Matter

It's impossible to brace yourself for a stroke. One moment you're going about your daily life -- pushing a shopping cart in a supermarket, waiting in line at a bank, shaving in front of a mirror -- and the next everything is black. No warning, just a power outage of the head computer.

That was my experience, anyway.

At the age of 34, I had a stroke, which, I'm sure you've already kenned, I survived. I was lucky for two reasons: I was on our sofa at the time, so I didn't fall and hit my head nor break any bones, and it was only a minor stroke. Because I was "young," the doctor said. I have paresthesia in my hands and feet occasionally, especially at night, and I sometimes twist my mouth in a way that makes it look as though I'm unhappy, but otherwise it's been back to normal, save one disquieting side-effect:

When is the next one coming?

I don't live the healthiest of lifestyles. I drink too much, smoke too much. And dealing with stress is a cause-effect perpetual motion machine. Having a stroke didn't change that. In fact, it made it worse. When Death knocks on your door, even the slightest tap-tap-tap sounds like a clap of thunder, and having that constantly weigh on your mind is hard.

Forgetting it has been a breeze, though. Closing a door is easier than opening it, no? It's ironic that to forget my brush with death I continue to flirt with it, but what's that saying about keeping your enemies closer?

Human beings -- of which I am, somewhat embarrassingly, a club member -- are resilient. I want to live more than I fear dying. So every morning I wake up, get dressed, go about my business, keeping always in mind (but trying to ignore) that there's a clock counting down.

"Not today," I say to myself every morning before I leave for work. "Not tomorrow," I say before going to bed.

I'm usually right about that. One day I'll be wrong, though.

But only once.

My Beast Friend

I have a friend named Steve Carpenter. He's a doctor. Cardiology. My late wife, whose surname is Lee, has an uncle named Bum-suk and a cousin named Ki-bum. A veterinarian and an Ivy League graduate respectively, they were mocked unmercifully about their names while studying abroad (my uncle-in-law in Australia, my cousin-in-law in North Carolina). When I was in fourth grade, our class was in near hysterics when we found out that our teacher Mr. King's first name was Richard. We would later discover to much mirth that his wife's name was Virginia. Oh how we laughed.

"Doesn't it drive you nuts?" I asked Steve one evening over drinks at his place, mine a gin and tonic, his a 7 and 7. "You must get the same lame jokes every day."

"Every other day and you'd be about right," he told me. "But why should I care? You learn to live with it. My pager goes off close to fifty times a day if I'm lucky, more like a hundred when I'm not. If I can stop being annoyed every time I hear or feel that vibration, it isn't hard to fake a smile and a laugh whenever a patient asks me not to give him a wooden heart valve."

Perhaps I care about the meanings behind titles and words more than most. It's my job, after all. I edit a very well-known thesaurus -- it rhymes with Jose's -- and I've spent the better part of my life pondering the weight that words bestow upon their manifestations. I've also wondered again and again whether anyone really gives a shit.

That might sound too cynical; it's not meant to be. Because I have hope: a word, manifested.

Evan Justice is the name of the man who killed my wife. Two years ago this spring. My wife, always a hot-headed driver, was driving home on the freeway when a motorcyclist cut her off. According to witnesses, she tailgated the offender and honked our Dodge's car horn for between thirty seconds to two minutes, depending on which police statement is most accurate (and at this point I don't much care, nor did I ever, I think). She then passed the biker and exited the freeway. She was stabbed to death by the motorcyclist in our driveway as she was taking grocery bags out of the car trunk.

Evan Justice. Sentenced to six years for aggravated manslaughter. I wanted to strangle myself with the irony of that name, that sentence.

Instead, I bought a dog. A dachshund. My best friend.

I named him Flash, after my favorite DC Comics superhero. I no longer recall why, but I think it was because I myself wanted to run away as fast as I could. From grief, sorrow, life itself. Described by H.L. Mencken as "a half-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long," it seemed foolish -- and unprofessional, given my job of corralling words close to their herds -- to name such a dog as anything connoting speed, quickness. No puppy with such short, stubby legs could ever grow up to resemble my imagined sobriquet for him, "Flashy Dashy."

There are times in life where I exalt in being wrong. Gifted with abnormally long legs for his breed, he jumps like a dog-sized Lee Majors' Six-Million-Dollar Man. And boy can he run. Every Sunday I take him to the park. I love watching him run away past fields of dew-kissed grass when I throw a tennis ball. I love it even more watching him running back.

"That's my boy," I say as he lays the ball at my feet and I rub him behind an ear. "Never stop running."

Flash. Yes.

Sounds right, sharp.

Like lightning.