Some of you may remember an old post from ’09 about some emails I was getting for a different Joe Conway who works for a Condo Association, and how I had to scare them off with nerd-speak:
http://www.thismayneverhappen.com/?p=4
Well they still contact me now and then, and a couple months ago I had a good opportunity to mess with one of them again. Please forgive the base language (and underboob), and remember it’s a character, not me!
Read more…
Every car I saw on my way home from work today had a pretty girl in it. Where do they all come from? And why can’t I will them to fall in love with me, make me pull over, and give me their phone number? And why can’t I stop looking at them? And why did I run over that squirrel?
It seems to me there are far too few front porches on new construction houses. I’m not a very social person, but something about sitting up in the front of a house where you live, where all the people are all around, is appealing to me. But I can’t actually remember spending a ton of time on anyone’s front porch per-se, so this is all theoretical.
Sitting and waiting
with wrinkles getting deeper.
Lemonade is good.
Let’s think on it.
Randy Couture
Randy Couture took on a bigger, way stronger wrestler in Brock Lesnar, and handled his business (before getting a lead brick to the face). He was able to keep Brock pressed up against the cage where he works his top-of-the-heap dirty boxing. When he did get taken down, he didn’t stay there despite the 285lb behometh laying on him. Can he clinch with Jones without getting taken down and still get the best of the dirty boxing and takedowns? It’s a tall order, but if anyone can find a way to do it, he can. Frankly though, that would be his only option. Despite improvements, his boxing is not sharp enough, and his chin is not tough enough to stand at range with Jones.
Lyoto Machida
He has great takedown defense, but can it elevate to the kind of game Jones brings? Maybe if he works it hard enough in prep. One of Machida’s great strengths has been quick counter-striking, where he dashes quickly in and out of range. With Jones often striking on the offensive, Machida could be granted the opportunity needed to land a straight, heavy karate punch to the chin like he did against Rashad. But if he can’t stay on his feet and remain elusive, it could mean a second KO loss on his record.
Rashad Evans
I think Rashad Evans’s only chance is to put Jones on his back. Granted his wacky, gorilla-like head movement might make it tough for Jones to land strikes as easily as he does against everyone else in the world, but I don’t see Rashad counter-striking and winning the trade. One thing Rashad does as well as anyone except perhaps GSP, is hurl all of his weight into a lightning-fast shot that bulldozes fighters onto their backs. He’d have to time it right, and if it fails, avoid the clinch where Jones would win the takedown battle. Once achieved, nobody knows how well Jon ‘Bones’ Jones can fight from his back. Well, actually, Rashad Evans does.
Actual Predictions
Jones wins. Jones isn’t a new breed – he’s a unique beast. Big, strong, skilled. The good news is he’s setting a new bar that any hopeful Light Heavyweight will have to try to reach. The bad news is, with his physical gifts, if Bones keeps improving technically, he may be the only one who can reach the bar.
I was downtown today, walking to the el-station, and a young lady walked out of a building a bit ahead of me so that I was then walking a few feet behind her.
This geometry happens from time to time, and I often wonder, how many times have I been walking down the street behind someone, and the thought I was following them. How often have I scared someone just by walking, by being fairly large, by having that murderous look in my eye?
Being sensitive to the issue, I usually try to do something about it. If I’m fairly close, sometimes I’ll speed up so I can start walking ahead of them, so they know what I’m doing and not vice-versa, effectively handing them the power-position. I realize, however, that if that person was a bit leary of having me about, for those few moments were I’m speeding up my pace trying to catch up with them, I’m probably that much more terrifying!
Oh well.
Have you seen the movie? It’s terrible. It’s a sort of dystopian sci-fi flick from the fella who made Donnie Darko. It’s farcical, ridiculous, full of off the wall characters, bright colors and impossible technologies, and all of this is intentional, and all of this sounds like something I should like, but somehow none of it works. It’s dumb and you can’t tell what’s going on or what you’re suppose to think or who you should care about, but it’s too stupid to make you think about what you’re supposed to think or who you should care about, which otherwise might make it okay.
But I loved Donnie Darko. I didn’t care about the wacky sci-fi stuff I wasn’t sure about, because put all that aside, and it was a nice character piece. So after seeing Southland Tales at the theater, eventually I convinced myself Richard Kelly must know what he’s doing, and I must have been missing something. So when I saw the DVD for $3 at Jewel, I figured I’d give it another shot.
I WASN’T MISSING ANYTHING.
A few hours ago I was staring up at a handful of the collection, thinking about how I might explain myself if someone asked why I had this or that movie. It soon struck me that I have an explanation, a story about each of them, whether about the movie itself or the DVD and why I got it. In fact I could go on for a good few minutes about most, and the above Southland Tales tale could have easily been hundreds of words longer and more boring.
This doesn’t at all address the practical, fiscal, logical questions about why I ought to own so many movies, but responding to those questions point by point with sound reason wouldn’t really explain why I have all these things, and I think maybe this does.
Sleeping through the rain,
avoiding more than the rain,
The sun dries the rain.
P.S. This is the best thing about the movie. Cheers to Justin Timberlake! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dajn9Bk24CY
Once again I will be providing barely any comment on anything I’ve seen and stuffed the ticket stub in my wallet.
Jackass 3 in 3d: 9.7/10 (inasmuch as you get what you expect.)
Buried: 9.1/10 See this! It all takes place in a box, and it’s awesome. Ryan Reynolds does a fantastic job.
Easy A: 8.3/10
Take Me Out: 9.1/10 This is a play directed by the magnificent Bill Kincaid. You can’t see it. You should have though. It was really good.
Let Me In: ???/10 Mea culpa, I left the theater bored before the movie was over. From what I saw I didn’t enjoy the change in tone from the original. I was actually optimistic about this, and still look forward to trying again, maybe on DVD with a friend so I don’t quit on it.
Battle-Prov: 1,00,000/10 This was the final improv event for my hilarious friend Annie Rijks, who is now a MAINSTAGE player at Comedysportz. It was uproarious.
Hereafter: 5/10 Clint Eastwood has his own special style of melodrama, but it’s really just the worst kind of melodrama slowed down and dusted with grit. Yick.
Dead Snow: 8.9/10
Though there’s no ticket stub, I recently watched all of the T.V. series The Wire. After hearing people all around me proclaim it’s the best T.V. show of all time, I was a bit concerned my expectations would be too high. But no. It’s pretty great. I couldn’t know, but I imagine it’s a far more realistic portrait of police investigation than most other shows that do the same, and it’s littered with characters full of problems. Everyone has problems, but not everyone handles them the same way, and that can be seen in everyone’s different character arcs. It is officially my favorite non-genre T.V. show.
I’ve started running again, hoping to do the Illinois Marathon next year. In my preparations I was mapping out some runs (at www.mapmyrun.com, which is rad), and I started looking through some of my old training runs from the first time I was training for a marathon.
Finishing the marathon was a great feat, and not at all easy, but by far the worst time I’ve had of running was the 20 mile long-run I did 3 weeks before the marathon. By the end of the run every joint below my waist was hurting, the bottoms of my feet were hurting, and for the first time in all my training I was getting calf cramps. My memory of the ordeal isn’t perfect, and it’s kind of taken on a personal, mythical aura in my head. But today I ran across the plot of the run I made on mapmyrun.com, and it kind of brought it all back to life, evidence of what I went through.
Now I don’t mean to overplay how I felt during this run. It wasn’t tragic, I’m sure plenty of people have felt worst, and there was no permanent damage. But finishing it meant a lot to me. Unlike the marathon, there was nothing at stake here; nobody was watching, and at any point I could have just stopped running and shuffled home.
Which brings me to the Illinois Marathon. In order to run it, I’ll have to train 4 days a week all through winter. That sucks. I wonder if part of me is just trying to do for the whole winter that which I managed for the 20-mile run. Am I handing myself adversity to prove I can overcome it?
Anyone who knows me well knows I’m not great at the old sticking-with-it. I’ve quit a lot of stuff, and as it happens I made up a schedule and tried to train for this same marathon 2 years ago, and I wonked on it. So here I am, taking on something I don’t need to, that I failed at once before, and all it’ll take is for me to spit in the face of my own personal fatal flaw. It’s probably no surprise to anyone who knows me really well, ’cause I love doing things I’m not great at.
I breathe well
entering the lane.
Falling down.
P.S. Looking at those maps, I have no idea how I remembered those long paths! I didn’t spend much time memorizing them or anything… and although this is the longest, some have even more turns and what not!
I decided to get all smart and figure out why vegan brownies always fail and try to fix it. Scientist that I am, I recorded pictures for my notes. It didn’t go well.
Right out of the oven they looked like not-brownies, which aren’t as good as pot-brownies:
But 10 minutes later it got worse when I saw I had recreated the tortured landscape of an alien world full of giant space beasts that like to eat human faces and fingers:
My way is my way
through the snow without your boots;
I need bystanders.