The Weight

Losing 25 pounds in three weeks(ish) is revelatory.  I know I'll probably gain a fair amount of it back, but I now weigh 199 pounds, a size I haven't been since 1987, the year I got out of the army.  I started the diet in part to support my wife who was doing it too, but mostly because I needed a change.  For the last few weeks and change, I haven't had a drink, haven't eaten very much and haven't gone out at all.  The difference is remarkable.
When you get to be a certain age, say 44, you start to believe that the changes you notice in your life, physically, mentally are mostly due to age, and they probably are.  But many of the small issues that were cropping up in my life, occasional high blood pressure, lethargy, gut, have gone away with the weight.  I'm not a new man, haven't turned a corner, will not be pulling a dingy full of people from Alcatraz to the San Franciscon shore anytime soon, but I do feel better, more alive, happier.
Now, I know that this won't last, that I will probably revert to being the fatter, happier, drunker me soon.  In the meantime, I can't recognize the man in the mirror, but he looks good.

Showdown at the Pearly Gates

There's a fight in heaven tonight over who gets in first, if at all--A CEO of a gadet company or an NFL Owner.  One a tyrannical, son-of-a-bitch who ran his company like a concentration camp and screwed over every partner he ever had, and the other Al Davis.  Yeah, I said it.  Steve Jobs was an asshole.

The endless ass kissing that has followed Jobs' death is enough to make me want to buy a Zune, if i could find one.  And isn't that the point?  I could find a Zune, but Apple's product is so dominant that it wouldn't be worth the money.  The company that Jobs designed is the biggest monopoly in corporate history, which is admittedly not Jobs fault so much as it is proof of his genius.  So why hate the guy?  It's the comparisons to Henry Ford that I have the biggest issue with.  Ford knew what planned obsolescence was, but he didn't push it to the ridiculous heights that Jobs did.  The endless need to own the latest Apple, made in China, piece of shit is the issue.  Every fucking time a new Apple product comes out you know it will be replaced in a year.  You know that the company making it has more cash on hand than the U.S. government and you know that people in shit hole factories in China are being exploited to make the product, which, I readily admit, is amazing.  It's not that Jobs wasn't a genius, or that his product is inferior, it's that he didn't have a heart.  He didn't give his money away, as Bill Gates is busy doing.  He was hard on his employees and he cared more about the bottom line than is decent.  Yes, his inventions have changed the world, but so has his corporate model, which will be imitated to our detriment as a nation and as a planet.  I want to champion the guy who invents some shit that will last a decade and was made in America.  Yeah, I know that nobody makes anything in our country, which might be why we are nearly dead.  It is time to start asking more of our geniuses, of ourselves.  How much cooler would Jobs' legacy be if he had been just a little more conscientious, like Al Davis?

The Ride

T.S. Eliot had it wrong--September, not April, is the cruelest month.  The shitstorm that is my life for the 9 month of the year, between the kids going back to school, myself going back to school, my wife going back to school, is as demoralizing as it is debilitating.  I has never been easy, but for the last five years, I have had an annual reason to get over the pity party, my friend Kris.

Five years ago, when Kris was diagnosed with MS, I didn't know what to think.  After doing some research into the disease, I got worried.  Fortunately, Kris's response to medicine has been great thus far and his symptoms haven't progressed, but neither Kris, his family or friends wanted to sit around and do nothing to help.  As luck would have it, or so I thought before my first journey, MS sponsors an annual bike ride in the Ventura to Santa Barbara vicinity.  So, we did what we thought was right.  Kris bought a bike, asked me and several others to come along and we haven't looked back.  5 years and three bikes later, I'm still going on "the ride" with Kris and his ageless father, Ron.  Each year, I have felt a little more like a biker, a little less like a scared, out of shape friend who's in over his head.  I have had an annual reason to stay in reasonable shape, something anyone who knows me knows I need.  I have become closer with each passing year to a friend who ranks among my favorite people.  I have become more connected to Kris's family, who I look forward to seeing every year.  It has become an annual holiday, a day of action, national "getoffyourassandhelpafriendday".  Yesterday, as I rode with Kris and Ron and Julius and Faye and the always happy Mike, I thought of how lucky I am, to be able to help a friend, to be able to climb a mountain on a bike and to do it with my lovely wife and not to shabby children as my road crew.

When I was in the second grade, my teacher, Mrs. Shimatsu, gave me a certificate at the end of the year:  "Most likely to be happy-go-lucky".  In retrospect, she was probably insulting me as I hadn't exactly been an academic star in her class, but it didn't seem to bother me.  Whatever her reasons, she had it right.  My life has had its share of ups and downs, but I still feel lucky.  Lucky to have friends I want to help, lucky to have kids I still like, lucky to have a wife who actually likes me.  Thanks for another great year, Kris.  Some of my best memories have come on "the ride", at the Hollywood Bowl, at Karaoke.  You're one of the best and I'm proud to be on your team.