LET'S TAKE A MINUTE TO TALK ABOUT MY CALVES

LET'S TAKE A MINUTE TO TALK ABOUT MY CALVES IN ALL CAPS. I STRESS THE CAPITALIZATION BECAUSE THIS IS SOMETHING OF A BIG DEAL FOR ME. I DON'T GROW MUSCLES ANYWHERE ELSE ON MY BODY EXCEPT MY CALVES. THIS IS DUE TO THE HIGH VOLUME OF BIKING/LOW VOLUME OF EVERYTHING ELSE IN MY LIFE. RECENTLY I NOTICED A PLEASING DEFINITION IN MY CALF MUSCLES FOLLOWING SEVERAL LONG DISTANCE BIKE RIDES. THERE IS A FORM AND CURVATURE TO MY CALVES NEVER BEFORE VISIBLE AND I MUST SAY THEY FEEL "RIGHT" WHENEVER I GIVE THEM A GOOD SQUEEZE. WHEN THE LIGHT HITS THEM THE RIGHT WAY, THEY ACTUALLY CAST A SHADOW OVER THE REST OF MY LEGS. SOMETIMES I STRETCH THE WRONG WAY IN MY SLEEP AND PULL SOME MUSCLE DOWN THERE AND I AWAKE TO SHARP STINGING PAIN IN EITHER CALF. NOT THE BEST THING TO AWAKEN TO BUT IT CERTAINLY ZAPS AWAY THE GROGGINESS. IF I COULD BE REMEMBERED FOR ONE THING IN MY LIFE IT WOULD BE A DEDICATION TO THE CREATIVE ARTS. IF I COULD BE REMEMBERED FOR TWO THINGS IT WOULD BE A DEDICATION TO THE CREATIVE ARTS AND A FIRM MUSCULATURE OF THE CALF MUSCLES. I AM NOT EVEN JOKING YOU CAN TELL HOW SERIOUS THIS IS BECAUSE IT'S IN ALL CAPS.

Wolverine v. The Global Economic Meltdown

by guest columnist Wolverine


Hey Bub.

Over here, in the alley. It's me, the ol' Canucklehead. I'm the best there is at what I do, but lately what I do's gettin' less and less nice.

Been fallin' on some pretty hard times lately, what with the economy and all. Prof. X had to close the Mutant Academy. Told me I couldn't squat there no more after an incident involving bear shit. A lot of bear shit. See that dumpster back there with the hobo piss? S'my new home.

Now I know it ain't paradise, but a man's got to settle for what'n he can in these troubling economic times. Livin' ain't easy, but livin's all I got left.

Done a lot things I ain't proud of. Ate a guy's family the other day. Can't say he didn't have it comin', though I reckon he didn't altogether deserve it neither. That's the thing about life out in the wild: you take the hand your given.

Tried to wrap my head around the situation. Washington. They're the bastards got us into this mess. Looks like it's up to yours truly to get us out of it. Now, I don't know to much about systems of aggregate growth or nothin' of that sort, but I do know this: if you want the job done right, you're gonna need a good dose of ice-cold adamantium rage.

Cooked up a plan all on my own. No X-men, not this time. Too much red tape, too much "Logan, this isn't even a plan, you're just stabbing people at random". Nice try, Cyclops, but I got this one all worked out. Y'see, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go down to Washington and start stabbing people. This will pretty much be at random, but the thinking is sooner or later I'm gonna wind up face to face with one a the bozo's responsible for messin' with me an' mine. And when I do, bub, you can bet he'll wish he had my mutant healing ability.

It won't be easy. I ain't ever taken on no economy before. Space demons, sure. Ninjas, plenty of em'. But when it comes to fighting an intangible concept based on a set of rules I can't rightly fathom, I'm at a bit of a loss. Lucky for you I handle all my problems the same way: with a judicious amount of stabs to the gut. When the ol' Canucklehead here gets done with this global economic downturn, they're gonna be pickin' through my bear-sized shit just to try'n identify it.

another ode to biking

the weather in the northeast is finally of a caliber i would call fucking fantastic. as i write this, my door-sized windows (actually they are doors but they don't lead anywhere except a three-story death drop) are wide open and the warmcool air that's usually reserved for the dogrider days of summer is filling my room. i just rode my bike home through this intoxicating weather and i was reminded of my biking adventures thus far in 2009.

let me first state that i am really an advocate of biking. i am by no means what you'd call a "biker" (i.e. no distinguishing clothing, no road bike, no crew of bros on bikes) but i am very much enamored with riding my bike through cities and forests and everywhere in between. i ride a big conspicuous mountainbike, a trek, and i like to take it anywhere it will let me. one of the things i like about biking is you create all your own energy for your vehicle. your speed and endurance is generated entirely by your own will; there's no other fuel source to worry about or throw money into. also it reminds me of sprinting incredibly fast but ALL THE TIME. even when you are catching your breath there is still the possibility of traveling at high speeds. lastly, there is an adventurous feel to traveling on a bike, something that hiking comes close to but doesn't fulfill in the same way. i think it's the combination of the journey and the speed. this is especially poignant when bombing through a forested trail and playing the lord of the rings theme in your head at full volume.

in this first quarter of the new year i've already had a variety of bikeventures, let's call them (yeah, i don't have many friends). one of the first truly warm days this year was so unseasonable that it got all fucked up by clashing high and low pressure systems and crazy storms resulted. riding out into the warmth, i was greeted halfway into my trip by the craziest sunshowers ever. the sun was bright above but the rain was whipping in sideways out of nowhere. i got absolutely soaked but was rewarded with a gigantic and perfectly arched rainbow over the delaware river. somehow it was all very symbolic; the sunshowers, the rainbow, life, the universe, my bike. i think it meant everything's going to be ok.

oh god are we still going with this post? phew, ok. this season of bikings also holds the farthest distance i have yet to travel in a single day, which was roughly 50 miles. i went from my apartment in south philly, along the scenic schuylkill river, all the way to valley forge, pa and back. i could not move for a little while after i got back. clearly it was awesome. i was considering not doing the whole thing but then saw a huge factory on fire and remembered that going out and seeing things was better then not, so i continued on through a brown haze of smoke and toward my eventual goal. this also had some symbolism but i don't wanna get into it.

today's bikescursion (yeah, basically no friends) was a reminder that you can't always go out and rock n roll when it's 94 degrees and you've barely eaten anything. i tried to hit up one of my mountainbiking haunts outside philly and shit was good for about 5 seconds before the heat and the hills combined to punch me in the face. i was in a bad way, walking my bike over terrain i would usually attack head on. i noticed that i wasn't very sweaty and in fact was getting goosebumps and this usually means you're about to have a heat stroke so i called it a day and got a milkshake at this really good place down the street. it was a trying experience and largely unpleasant (sans milkshake) but i equate it to just another tale of bikeventure. there will always be difficulties and hills you simply have to walk your bike up because they're too fucking steep and loose, but that's part of the journey. if there weren't hills and heat and rainstorms out of nowhere, you'd never see the forest or the industrial fire or the rainbow's perfect arc across the sky. i know this is a very obvious point to be making, but it reveals itself time and again through the simple act of moving forward on a bike. the journey is the destination, and vice versa.

i love this fucking bike.

Look Good In Time For Mass Genocide

i just found this ad on facebook. hilarious. not only is facebook on a downward spiral into incongruity and suck, but now they're running ads with neo-nazis telling you to get in shape. of all the muscled icons to use to promote ab-toning, they go with ed norton circa american history x. brilliant. toughen up those pecs so you can tattoo swastikas onto them! strengthen your calves to curb stomp minorities! i think the internet is just running out of ideas. that, or i am just completely disconnected from modern society and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this image. fuck. game over, man. game over.

UPDATE: apparently there IS nothing wrong with this. facebook just wants more cash and therefore the levee of decency is allowed to break. look, even gawker commented on this same ad: http://gawker.com/5215018/facebooks-get+rich+quick-scheme-has-yankees-player-sliding-into-home

p.s. I BEAT YOU GAWKER BY A WHOLE DAY. WHO'S RELEVANT NOW?????

why i'm bad at dancing

Age 10, I am at a German restaurant in upstate New York with my parents. Everything is going swimmingly until an accordion-toting musician enters the room. Sporting lederhosen and a feathered cap, he launches into traditional Bavarian folk tunes of a bygone era. I try to accept the scenario as harmless but it escalates severely. "We are now going to do the Chicken Dance," he announces, "and this young man is going to demonstrate how it's done!"
He's referring of course to me, the only child in the room. Any intended humor is lost to my juvenile mind, and I am faced with the very real threat of having to chickendance for the thirty-odd patrons in attendance. I plead with my parents, please don't let him make me dance, in a tone reminiscent of a child being dragged to a death camp. My heart is pounding, my head heavy with the thought of flapping my lanky arms while the accordion squawks its tune. Already the crowd is laughing in anticipation. Already they await my drawn out humiliation. I can feel his eyes on me, ready for me to join him in the center of the room, his leathery jowls like the collapsable lung of his instrument.
I cannot accept this fate. I refuse to face the firing line, to be jester to these bastards. I run from the room, out into the lobby. I would sooner abandon my family than dance like a chicken at a German restaurant. As a consequence, I will never be able to dance in any acceptable way, and all efforts to hone this skill will fail miserably. My body shifts awkwardly. I stumble. I lack rhythm. I will simply look for the nearest exit and run.

a couple non sequiturs about music

a friend told me they thought music was the most engaging art, a medium that communicated to the human soul more directly than any other medium in existence. i realized i agreed with this, probably always have, and probably always will.

lately i've had several "only listen to the smiths" phases. while the implications of this are bad (emo), i realize that i could have far worse taste in music.

the new animal collective album, while good, is one of their worst. breakfast at sulimays was right. (and whoever edited that episode is sexually enticing [and possibly me])

i have no problem with playing a song on repeat for hours on end, in fact this happens at least every other month. it helps me stay in a certain mode of thought while drawing or writing, plus sometimes you just need to keep listening to a song.

i played the upright bass in high school and just as i was starting to get good at it i got accepted to college and never played it again. this is possibly a regret.

my music listening habits are on a sort of pendulum that swings between melancholic tender tremblings and raucous heavy shit. i spend a few months on one side before swinging back to the other, and back and forth into eternity.

in the past few years i've gained a taste for more chaotic music i.e. tuneless structureless emotionless jarble that most people would shy away from. i even bought the whole druqks album by aphex twin. this likely stems from my overall appreciation of chaos and it's outright refusal to adhere to maths.

i was, at one point, a phish head. i saw their "final" festival in vermont and got lost for several hours on mushrooms, during which time i casually peed in front of a great many people and tried to lay down on a pile of mud. this is possibly a regret.

scott goldstein introduced me to the pulp album "this is hardcore" when i was in ninth grade and it became one of the greatest things i have ever listened to. it is now adorned with many mental connections of which i am reminded every time i give it a listen.

what genre is tv on the radio anyway? art rock? fuck, i don't know.

the first concert i ever went to was weird al yankovic.

last year i made my first honest-to-goodness music documentary about the band arizona. i like to think of it as unique because i was able to capture the birth of a song. literally the exact moment the idea for the song came into existence was caught on film, followed by its progression into a fully fleshed-out piece of music. if you haven't seen it, take a 20-minute breather and do so now.

playing drums on rock band is a lot of fun but my drums are broken right now FUCK.

i recently made a mix cd that included: talking heads, fugees, kate bush, wilco, ben kweller, the manhattans, tegan and sara, and the berlin philharmonic orchestra, to name a few. i don't think those musicians have ever all made it into the same sentence before.

i had a dream last night that my mom took me out to dinner with barack obama. it was thunder and lightning outside and we all sat at a candlelit table conversing like good friends. he asked me if i thought he was the best president ever. i said "given the current situation and your resolve in dealing with it, i think you are doing great." barack just sort of smiled at me as lightning flashed outside. though this isn't music related, i thought it was worth mentioning here.

in times of severe depression and loneliness, the only thing that can truly shift my mood is good music. this is endemic to the idea that music is the most powerful medium of all. AND SO THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETED.

Baseball Caps

i don't know what it is, but i am just not a baseball cap fan. this has been a lifelong issue for me. something about wearing a baseball cap, sports-themed or not, has never gelled with my character. every time i don one it looks like i'm faking it, like i'm wearing it in the most insincere way possible. the worst part is i can't even put my finger on why this is. put me in a wool cap, a tophat, a mining helmet, or a tri-cornered revolutionary ditty, and i get along fine. hell, my look might even improve in one of these. but as soon as i try on a standard baseball cap, everything goes wrong. my hair gets weird, the shape of my head changes, and my temples are constricted, causing the veins on either side to throb as if my soul is filled with hatred. then there's the brims. i can't get the brims right ever. they are either perfectly flat, suggesting i need special education, or overly bent into a horrid upside-down V, suggesting i'm some sort of asshole. even if you were to give me a hat with the brim perfectly curved in whatever way the kids are wearing them these days, it would constrict into some unacceptable shape the minute it came in contact with my scalp. don't even get me started on the thing in the back where you can adjust the size.

as i said before, the only thing worse than my incompatibility with baseball caps is the utter lack of a reason for this issue. my head and face are pretty average; there's no definable reason why i should have an issue with caps, yet i am continually beset by this curse. i don't even have photographic evidence of this because i am so rarely seen sporting a baseball cap. i think the only way to ever overcome this would be to transmogrify into a completely different person, and though i've toyed with the idea, we both know i wouldn't look anywhere near as good in snow hats. CASE CLOSED.