i should be in arcade fire

why are there so many people in the band arcade fire? are all of them necessary? is there room for one more? can i ask to join? would they mind? i don't have any musical talent but it looks like fun to be in a band that has so many people that i actually have to count out loud or use my fingers before coming to the conclusion.

i perform stand up comedy. it gets so lonely up on that stage. sometimes i become envious of bands and the way they get to share a stage together. whether they succeed or fail, they do it together. it makes the possibility of failure seem more fun than it actually is. and if you succeed, you suddenly have other people to share it with. i imagine succeeding at stand up comedy can probably be a lonesome experience in many ways. sure, you might have friends and/or family to share it with, but they're not up there with you. they're not in the trenches dodging bullets. that's you, alone in a foxhole. being lonely sucks. being in a foxhole sucks. now put the two together.

arcade fire is an army. they're like the wu-tang clan of hipster music. arcade fire's not a band. they're a club or a gang. being a member of arcade fire comes with a sense of belonging. so what do you say? got room for one more on that stage? i'll try to take up the least amount of room as possible. i'm sure i can ironically bang on a can or blow into an electric kazoo. i know i'm taller than the lead singer and that might be off-putting, but i can crouch or stand in the back or take a chair. let me know. i'm ready to go.

chasing old people

some thoughts after running my first half marathon:

i say "my first," because i hope to run more. the one in jersey city is awesome, affordable, and convenient for me location wise. it's at a good time of year weather wise. i definitely would like to run it again next year and who knows, possibly the year after and so on. i'll probably just take this one year at a time. i don't wanna get ahead of myself. i never really like to get ahead of myself when it comes to running. i kinda just wanna keep running... small distances, long distances, whatever. i just don't wanna over think it too much. it's something i'd like to keep up with till i'm too old to do it and it's something i'd like to enjoy doing the whole time. over thinking running (much like anything else really) sorta takes some of the joy out of it.

i saw a fair amount of older people running this half marathon... people of all ages really. but i saw people who i figured were at least in their 50's and 60's running this thing, and some of them were running hard. there were parts of the race where i'd be running in the opposite direction of other runners who were possibly a half to a full mile ahead of me. i'd catch a good glimpse of these people and a fair amount of them seemed to be fairly older than me. and that was immediately inspirational to me. this isn't just about this 13.1 miles. it's about the next 13.1 miles and it keeps going. running never stops.

sure, i had goals for this day alone. but when i catch a glimpse of people decades ahead of me running, i think about the bigger picture. no matter how well (or poorly) i ran this half marathon, it's about the continuation of the habit. it's about growing old as a runner. i don't ever wanna quit this. when i'm older, i wanna be that older dude in the half marathon that a younger person sees and thinks, "i can keep doing this for a long time." this isn't a phase for me. whether people older than me were running faster or slower than me isn't what's important to me, what's important is that they're running and that's what i wanna be doing when i reach their age. and until i get to that point, i'll always be chasing the older runners. and i'm glad they're out there giving me something to look forward to.

three days, a half marathon, and food poisoning

today marks four weeks of sobriety. i quit drinking for a month leading up to a half marathon i'm running this sunday. what do i get for four weeks of sobriety? a case of food poisoning. a stomach that won't stop punishing me. it hit me at work and chased me out early. this is the last thing i need three days prior to running 13.1 miles. today i puked harder than drinking has made me puke in years. this feels like punishment (well, technically it is. i'm being punished for something i chose to eat today).

i could begin to go over some of my dietary choices as of late. i've been eating a lot of things with sugar in them. i'm sure this is no coincidence, more like a form of compensation for the lack of booze. i've drank more soda in the past four weeks than i probably have in the past four years. i still go to bars (almost a must if you wanna tell jokes on microphones) so i gotta drink something. i've been purchasing soda cuz i don't have the cohonas to order a juice (afraid my manhood will be judged) or a water (afraid i'll be seen as cheap which i'm not. i'm just trying not to drink. also, i always tip even when ordering water).

i'm not saying all the consumption of sugary stuff is what's brought me here. but i'm a dude who's running every other day and exercising every other day i don't run (i do usually take a day off per week to just chill out). i'm sleeping well. i take vitamins. besides the consumption of sugar, i don't do much that leaves me at risk of being a generally unhealthy person. and that's exactly how i feel... that somehow being unhealthy has lead me to this. that if i had consumed less garbage over these past few weeks, my system wouldn't be in a vulnerable place to be susceptible to this sorta thing.

and i know the words i'm typing are coming from a very uneducated place. i'm just taking shots in the dark at what could possibly be to blame. but what's the worst that can happen under this assumption? i start to consume less soda and junk food from here on in? even if that's not to blame, it's still a nice goal to shoot for. it could only do me more good than bad at this point.

right now it's 10:02pm. i don't know where this sickness is taking me. i'm tired. i hope i can sleep. i hope i can wake up and eat and not be doomed by my body to suffer much more of this. i hope i can go to work and put in a full day. i hope i can run the 3.5 miles i planned to run tomorrow, the final run i will do before the half marathon.

this half marathon is a big deal to me. i don't expect it to be a big deal to other people. that's one of the many things i love about running. it's a very selfish thing. i'm out there on my own doing my own thing. and when i complete that half marathon, i can say that i took my carcass off of  beer belly/couch potato status about five years ago and crossed a finish line that will be the longest run of my life thus far. i've been running 12 miles once a week for about the past six weeks. i know i can run that extra 1.1 miles to make it 13.1. but i don't. cuz sunday is special to me. it hasn't happened and it already means so much. i've purposely done all i can to put myself into a situation where i know i can run the distance and still be able to claim that it's the longest distance i've hit yet.

i've done a lot of thinking about this. i'm extremely proud of myself. i don't know where i'm taking my running habit after this. i've had thoughts of chilling out for the winter (chilling out still means running every other day and probably knocking my weekly 12 mile runs down to 5-7 mile runs). there's a part of me that wants to feel great after this and maybe look further down the path into running longer distances. maybe i'll keep it up with the sobriety thing or maybe i'll run and get a beer immediately following the race. i won't really know where my head's at till i'm done on sunday.

but first i gotta get to sunday. and this food poisoning nonsense is really fucking up my game.

moments in assholery

i almost hit a pedestrian the other day while driving. i was making a left and i was so concerned with getting over the lane to the left of me that had oncoming traffic, that i didn't realize there was a guy trying to cross the street. i caught a glimpse of him in time to stop the car. as i brought my vehicle to a full stop, he looked at me and froze. another dude who was on the other side of the street about to cross said, "can you believe this guy?" to the guy i almost hit. i just sat there, foot firmly on the break, made eye contact with the dude i almost hit and told him i was sorry about five times. all he said to me was, "c'mon man, this is a residential area."

and then i drove off all sorts of shook up. i didn't wanna hit that guy. and all i could think about was what if i did hit that guy? what did that say about me? i was completely sober. i just wasn't paying full attention to all my surroundings. at what point on the moral compass do i become a bad dude in this situation? i don't feel like a bad dude but if i would've hit him, even if it was a total, absolute, 100% mistake on my part, i'm totally a bad guy. there's no getting around that. as the situation stands, that dude now has the right to refer to me as the asshole who almost hit him with a toyota corolla for the rest of his life. that's me. that's my role in this dude's life story. any and everything else about me carries no weight in his narrative.

here i was, i had spent my whole day like i spend most of my days. just trying to stay out of trouble. just trying to not be an asshole. just trying to enjoy life and not shit on anyone else's. those are my generic goals day to day in life. and in just one brief moment, the whole thing almost got fucked up. without trying very hard, i almost fucked another life up big time. and this took no effort on my part. i thought i was doing everything a-okay right up until i saw a dude a few feet from my car.

the whole thing is a sucky situation. there's only two things i can walk away from this situation with:

the first is gratitude. i'm glad i didn't hit that dude. i'm glad i didn't severely hurt another human being which in turn would've severely hurt his circle of family and friends... all for nothing. all because i was too dumb to pay attention to the details. i'm very thankful that my own airhead ways didn't cause any physical damage to another human being.

the second is a wake up call. i need to give driving my full, undivided attention. i can be a real dullard sometimes and that's fine if i hit my head on a low hanging tree branch or trip on a curb or forget to buy toilet paper. but when i'm in a car, that's a big hunk of machinery that can fuck shit up in an instant. and i need to do a better job of making sure i don't fuck anything up with said automobile... if not for me, then for the sake of my fellow humans. anything less makes me an asshole.

boxing for unity

so mayweather fought that canelo dude tonight and i didn't watch it. honestly, i just wanna pass it off as two dumb millionaires punching the crap out of each other and why would i wanna watch that? but they're probably not that dumb because they make a ton of money doing what they do. still, it's just two rich dudes punching each other's faces. what's with the massive interest?

i could try and wax philosophical about human blood lust and how the most primal parts of our being connect with this sorta thing. people love a fight. it's not just boxing. it happens in bars and streets and schoolyards. and when it happens, most of the time there's a bunch of people standing around and gawking. we love to watch people beat each other up.

i happened to be walking through jersey city tonight as the fight was happening. and i passed a ton of apartments and houses with wide open windows where you could hear people having fun and enjoying themselves at get togethers that were thrown for the fight. and i guess that's sorta cool. that's an unexpected positive result from two people beating each other senseless in front of cameras.

i suppose it's all in the speech at the end of rocky 4 when rocky tells the crowd that everyone changed during that fight. and that if two people can hurt each other instead of 20 million people hurting each other, then isn't that the better option? rocky 4 probably ended the cold war. there's real power to bring people together through people fighting each other.

sure, the world wasn't saved tonight. i don't think any major wars were avoided. but just for one night a bunch of people in a bunch of places had an excuse to leave their house and go hang out with other human beings. we're living in a world where people interacting with each other in person is becoming a less common thing. so i like to think that two people making millions of dollars beating the holy hell out of each other did actually, for maybe a moment or so, make the world a better place.

enjoy your mansions fellas. thanks for the memories.

sit there and stare (this is about syria)

all this talk of war with syria has me feeling all sorts of helpless. i wanna scream, "DON'T DO IT!" but even if i did, it'd fall on deaf ears. this is gonna play out how it's gonna play out and all i can do is sit here and stare. if a certain chosen few decide to start throwing bombs at stuff, they do so in the name of america, in my name. there's gonna be blood and life lost and that's all got my name on it. there's blood on my hands and here i am not wanting any part of it. i don't wanna play the role of the killer. i don't even wanna play the role of the playground enforcer who from time to time has to drop a body to keep things fair and balanced in his sandlot.

syria's civil war is a complicated thing. and i don't think there's any easy solution. and it's extremely sad to see the loss of life that goes on over there. in the end, children are the real victims of all wars. and that concept will forever break my heart. but i don't know if us trying to impose our will on one side or the other is the fix for this dilemma. i can't see any logic in the idea that we'll rain hellfire on "specific targets," which will in turn somehow inspire the two sides of this conflict to wake up the next day and suddenly find themselves in the mood to hug it out.

i have no idea what should be done in this situation. and i don't think anyone else does either. i don't see how this doesn't get sloppier than intended for us. we're about to insert ourselves into a fight that is extremely personal to both sides. i don't think we have the empathy to realize how impassioned both sides of this battle really are. this isn't our fight. it's sad knowing that there's a fight going on and nothing can be done till both sides are done fighting it out. but i don't think our involvement will bring about a clean ending any sooner.

but we're america. we got a reputation to uphold. we always know what's best for everyone else. and if you disagree with our moral assessments, then prepare to find yourself the victim of our military onslaught. cuz that's what morality's all about. telling yourself you're always right and kicking the shit out of anyone who has anything contrary to say. freedom of speech and all that.