Back in the day, I used to subscribe to Utne Reader... I still like some of their articles, but I dunno, they tend to be very very liberal (not that I'm not, but even too liberal for my tastes at times). In my never ending quest to become better informed about meatless living, this popped up on my Twitter account today!

I had brown rice and blackeyed peas for dinner last night, and I'm the leftovers for lunch today! And now as I sit here wrting up projects at work, I made a delicious mix of 16 Horsepower songs to get me through the morning. Sometimes life is just too darn good :-)

With Anna Nicole Smith now dead, don't you think we need someone like Sarah to laugh at?

The latest- and with a vegan twist!

I thought this reply to the story was quite funny...

Multitudes of cannibals have testified that human beings taste no different than pork. In Papau, New Guinea, where cannibalism is still practiced, human meat is called "long pork." Serial cannibal Albert Fish ate dozens if not hundreds of children during the 1920's-he said, "I love children. They are so tasty," and wrote in detail how he cooked them. Sweeney Todd was no fairy tale-he was for real, and his neighbor was a butcher who routinely made pork pies and sausages from his murdered victims. Nobody knew. I can go on and on-obviously Ms. Palin needs to be schooled in sociology that human beings, too, are meat. I find the consumption of muscle tissue, blood, and guts quite disgusting, which is why I've been vegan for many years and I'm in perfect health with perfect labs. In fact nothing that comes from an animal goes in my body.

OK, maybe he is a bit over the top, but anyone who cites Albert Fish in a blog has got to be an interesting character!

1. I am telling more and more people about my attempt to give up meat (yes, fasting has gone into becoming faux-veg). Most people love to tell me how they cannot survive without meat, how it makes them feel stronger. I think that's total BS- I just think we are conditioned to eat meat, even though we can live without it. My whole outlook changed on Monday.. I was sitting at my desk at lunchtime watching stuff on Yahoo, and all of a sudden this random video popped up. WARNING- THIS IS VERY DISTURBING. I was aware that this sort of stuff happened in the slaughterhouse industry, but just seeing it so graphically depicted gave me a revelation of sorts. The suffering I saw... and I know, these videos are slanted so that you see the horror, but my god, we humans do some fucked up things not only to each other, but to the animals we share the world with.

It turns out that the organization Mercy For Animals has home bases in Chicago and Columbus. They seem to be a bunch of young people trying to make a difference. I need to look into this stuff.. I need to ask myself why am I wanted to change a way of eating that I've had all my life. I think there are just a lot of things going on in my head right now... I want to do something different with my life, I'm on the verge of 50 and perhaps, instead of buying a Lexus like one of my co-workers did, my midlife crisis involves changing the way I look at my body and what I put into it.

This notion of cruelty to animals also makes me think about abortion for some reason. I am very pro-choice, but I am sure the anti-choice people out there make videos that depict abortion in the same way these animals are being killed. I think they are two totally different concepts, but I could see how someone could attempt to link them.

I have so much to write about, but I need to get ready to get to the office!

I always have to throw in a reference to my fave Anne Sexton title at times like these :-)

So I was going to wait until the 29th to start my one year push to perfect myself in every way, since on November 29th 2010 I will turn 50 years old. But then I said to myself, why wait until the 29th to get rolling- why not start now?

In reality, at this time in my life, things are pretty darn good. We have a nice house, we both make good money, we are both healthy... but I don't want to be "just healthy"... in the back of my head, or perhaps in the front of my head, there is this voice that says I should be the same body-wise that I was in my halcyon days. I define my halcyon days from about age 24 to age 37... I had a near-perfect body, I could go to killer aerobics classes for up to 2 hours at a time without even getting winded... I could still play basketball with younger kids and hold my own.

So what has happened to me as I get to middle age? Well.. I guess I have gotten to middle age. I know my body is not the same as when I was in my 20s and 30s, but that doesn't sink in. I see that my body is different when I look in the mirror... I have gotten thicker over the years... I am not as lithe and slim as I once was. I have more muscle, but that bogs me down at times. And of course I have body image issues from a long time ago... all through high school and college I was skinny, and that image still haunts me... so I went through a period where I killed myself in the gym, got to a size where I could be powerful and still have the athletic prowess I always had... but now, my body doesn't respond like it used to. I'm sure that my metabolism has slowed down... but I think I should now be able to rely more on my brain than on my body to get me where I want to be.

I'm thinking about starting off today with a fast. I just feel the need to shock my body into this new place. Don't get me wrong- I like being big. I like going into Bally's and being the big guy who can flex it up. But a part of me wants to be that step aerobic god again... I went to step class last Tuesday for the first time in maybe 8 months.. and I only did about 30 minutes of an hour class and I was hurting. The muscles you use in a step class are totally different from what I use during my weight lifting... and in the past, I'd say I was 60% aerobics and 40% weight lifting... now I'm around 85% weight lifting and 15% aerobics.

I was talking to a guy at the gym the other day who had hip surgery about 8 months ago... he's in his mid 50s, and he was one of those guys who was in amazing shape, loved to do 2 hour workouts... I asked him why I hadn't seen him at the gym lately, and he told me even though his hip was "OK", he didn't have the fire and passion for the gym that he used to. And part of me feels that way. I've been in the gym 4 or 5 days a week for 20 years... and I've been going exclusively to Ballys for the last 15. WHen I lived in Steubenville, me and my workout posse used to go to Pittsburgh just to take killer aerobic classes, or to several other gyms besides our own just to get a different feel for working out. Perhaps I should look to somewhere else besides Ballys, maybe Ballys is the root of my problems :-)

And I think my workouts have changed over the years because now I go most of the time with Tammy. She likes to get in and out in an hour... I never used to work out like that. I would go maybe 4 times a week max, but I'd do a minimum of a 90 minute workout, sometimes going 2 1/2 hours. But of course then I was single, my family was my workout group... now I'm settled down, we have a house and 2 cats... the responsibility of real life has perhaps made me change who I am over the years.

All that being said, I am going to be more cerebral about my body... not relying on workouts to get me where I need to be. I certainly need to be more organized with my after work time. I hate to be so anal about it, but maybe that's the only way I can do things now.

And so it begins. Cardio only today for my workout, but I'm going to do more stretching from now on... and I really need to get this eating thing together. I think that's my primary short term goal. I'm usually at my best when I don't partake of dairy products and bread. But I think even more than that, pasta is my killer. I LOVE PASTA. I always have and always will. But because I'm not burning calories the way I did 15 years ago, that's just fuel that turns to fat. I am trying to avoid writing down everything I eat, because that is tedious and unless you know the calories and grams of fat from the container, I have to go searching for the numbers. And I don't want to do one of those online charting things- I want to be smart enough to know what goes in my body on my own.

I know I can get back to where I want to be. It's all a matter of willpower. It's all in my head.

Who would have thought that seeing a 68 year old guy on stage would be one of the best concerts I've ever attended? Just being in the same room with a legend like Bob Dylan made me appreciate the experience all the more; and for someone who was not a die-hard Dylan fan, for me to get into the show like I did shocked me :-)

I guess by not being a Dylan purist, I was not jaded by the loss of voice, or the fact that he didn't play a lot of guitar (content instead to play an old school Korg keyboard that looked as old as him!)... I felt like I was at a really rockin' blues concert. And Charlie Sexton... how did he never live up to the potential of his mid-80s MTV hype? 25 years after Beat's So Lonely and he is looking like a rock god onstage... he and Dylan had a great vibe going all night. And I don't know, I guess people say Dylan doesn't do a lot of movement on stage, but I just thought it was surreal seeing this guy who was the high priest of the folk generation in the 60s, who almost caused a total riot in England with his electric show, who became saved and sang the first Dylan song I really got into (Changing of the Guards)... I mean there is so much history associated with this guy, and for the show not to sell out (only 4000 of 5200 seats were sold) I guess speaks volumes about the economy and about the fact that well, people see Bob Dylan as he was in 1965, and he is not that person anymore... a woman I work with got invited to the show, and she declined, saying "oh, I was never into his music"... but I think Bob Dylan is so much more than his music- and I dunno, I would think that in itself would be able to be appreciated by the masses. But all in all, 4000 people in Canton on a Thursday night is probably not all that bad.

Our set list was pretty good considering that he played Girl From The North Country, which he hasn't really done too much during this tour. And when I listen to my Rolling Thunder Bootleg Series CDs, it just seems like he has become a totally different artist than he was back then... and to me, that's a good thing. I know that Morris Day and the Time were in Akron a few weeks ago, and one one have to consider them a nostalgia act because they are basically still stuck in 1983, and if they have any new material it's really not even acknowledged by the public. Dylan has continued to press on through the years, being his own person, adding to his legacy with each passing year. I didn't feel like I was seeing an old man on stage- I was seeing a legend, a musical genius continuing to add to that legend.

And once again I have to thank atlashrugged for helping me to appreciate Bob Dylan! I would not have walked down the path of Bob without you giving me that initial push :-)

Happy birthday neurasthenia!!

I know you never post anymore, but you still read every now and then...

For all the runners on my LJ, and there appear to be several of you, check out the New York Times impression of the new look of marathons!

Here's an interesting article on the thought that black children do NOT do badly in school because of race... it's because of the lack of a father figure in the home.

Personally, I grew up in a two parent household, far away from the ghetto and such. So I didn't have the factors of "bad parenting" and "bad environment" working against me. But I don't know if you can blame this all on the lack of a father figure, although stats will show that the percentage of black men that are not in the home is decimating communities.

Not having children and speaking as an outsider of sorts, I think the whole mixture... family life, environment AND the teacher has a part to play in why a student does or does not learn. I think that teachers need to step up their game a bit and rethink how the process of educating a student is done. The draconian days of sitting children down and making them memorize stuff is dated and archaic. And in the end, everyone says they are a victim... the teachers are victims because the parents don't raise kids right, the mothers are victims because they have to raise the kid alone, the fathers are victims because society has branded them as public enemy number one...

I am intrigued by the comparison of the United States to other countries in terms of how well we educate children. In countries that have a homogeneous populace, I think the education system tends to work better, and that is tied to race. The United States is a melting pot of many people and many cultures, and to try and give a one size fits all solution to a society that isn't one size fits all creates problems. Capitalism and democracy foster competition, the survival of the fittest in a sense. We are conditioned to be winners, and when you are a loser, either in the classroom or in the workplace, you are branded as a failure by those who "succeed". Perhaps everyone is not meant to "succeed" in a democracy. The reality that every man is created equal is quickly negated by the fact that every man does not grow up equally. TO say that there are not inherent disadvantages to growing up in the inner city as opposed to the suburbs is simply fooling oneself. But I think our country revels in fooling ourselves. From the fact that the American Dream of home ownership, of having a good job and having a wonderful family is a god given right... from thinking that every child will have a quality education (and if not, we will throw enough money at the problem to make it work)... these things are SIMPLY NOT TRUE. It's like Dwight Yoakam's character said in Sling Blade: "You'd better wake up and face something called reality."

I think I had to come to grips with that a long time ago... I know that I cannot be "as good" as my white peers... I have to be better in order to even the playing field. I have to be better educated, I have to be more of an intellectual in order to just come to the same table. And even in this day and age, that is often seen as arrogance or anger by the white power structure. The same way that it sees the lack of education among black people as "a problem those people have because they don't do anything but make babies and smoke crack and get a welfare check."

But hey, we are all equal, right?

1. Last Saturday Tammy and I went to see XianGo!, which is a combination of art/dance/theatre. Tam Tam's Pilates teacher is a member of the dance troupe portion of the production, and she's been asking us to go for awhile now. They have some videos out there showing what goes on at the show, but people were saying, "you have to see it in person to appreciate it." While I normally think that's just a bunch of BS, in this case it was true. I loved the place we saw it in... the Kathleen Howland Theatre is a small space in the lower level of 2nd April Galerie here in Canton... and it was intimate enough so that you got up close and personal with everything that was going on. The dancers were close enough for you to touch them, and the process of creating a painting in less than 20 minutes was interesting. I mean, of course you are not going to create La Vie in 20 minutes, but I don't think it's about the quality of the art... it's about the interactive process of creation in a time frame with a central theme. And while, as Tammy Pilates teacher always says, artsy stuff is not Tammy's cup of tea, I think she enjoyed herself.

2. The transformation of Canton into a center for arts and artists is coming along nicely. I don't think it's something you can push too fast, especially in a place where you only have a finite percentage of people who are willing to pay money for art and to attend artistic functions. Of course, we have the Pro Football Hall of Fame here, and it looks like the powers that be at Arts In Stark are going to try to fuse art with football. I'm a bit leery about this latest "arts explosion", and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks things could get out of hand. I guess I'm about quality, not quantity. I can already see some stuff in our downtown that in my opinion needs to be hauled off to the scrap pile from whence it came... and I suppose that I am a bit disappointed that Arts In Stark and The Canton Museum of Art don't seem to be working in tandem to have a vision of what needs to happen arts-wise in the downtown. If it's just one person pushing the agenda, I don't think that's right. But I'm not going to be a hater and say that Canton doesn't need a thriving arts community- I just think that there has to be some thought put into it from a variety of sources. Instead of having these "pieces of football art" right in the downtown, why not put them into the neighborhoods... so then, much like in any city, people would have to go to different parts of the city to see something. The concentration of the "critters made of scrap iron" in the downtown is a bit played out to me- as spring comes along, you needc something fresh to replace some of that stuff. I don't want Canton to be seen as the home of recycled items as art- I want Canton to be seen as having some quality pieces on public display. We're not going to get anything as elaborate as The Bean in Chicago (although that would look great on that green space downtown), but does all our stuff have to be recycled stuff that in a few years time looks more like "recycled stuff" than true art?

3. Score one for the Canton Civic Center- they have Bob Dylan coming to the venue on November 5th. I can honestly say I was never a big Bob Dylan fan until atlashrugged started talking about how much he had influenced her life. I mean, until the last couple of years, my favorite Bob Dylan song was Changing of the Guards. I've learned to appreciate him as a poet and living legend now... and so if a living legend shows up in Canton, I am going to be there. 3rd row, dead center be there! And of course this all plays into my Edie Sedgwick obsession, since Bob and Edie were an item back in the day. So what goes around comes around I guess. And I'm not jaded by the fact that I'm not seeing 1965-era Dylan.. the way that I was jaded that I was not seeing 80s era Morris Day and the Time last weekend in Akron. I look at Dylan the way I would look at Leonard Cohen... you are in the same room with a genius, and genius never gets rusty. Because rust never sleeps, right Neil?

4. I also have to talk up my favorite local shop, The Blissful. I lovelovelove this store because it has really chic (not trendy) items that have a touch of French flair to them. Of course, my objective one day is to get Tammy to go to Paris... and subject her to the Louvre.. or get her drunk at an outdoor bistro and have her stumbling down the Champs-Elysees. So The Blissful is helping me in my quest... little by little, I'm introducing pieces of French art into our house and hoping it will inspire Tammy. And I swear the owner Abby must have my CD collection at her house... everytime I go in there, I'm hearing Aimee Mann or Portishead or Regina Spektor coming out of the speakers. And I like the fact that it's not a shabby place, where shabby people hang out. She has a business plan and she's going forward with it. We are transforming our house into what we want it to be, and I can get unique bits at pieces from The Blissful to help that process :-)

I like using Twitter for local interaction. Although I do follow a couple of tweeters up in the Boston/Cambridge area, on the whole, I am all about what's going on locally. Two of my favorite Tweetmates are on the local women's Roller Derby squad, the NEO Rock n Roller Girls.

So how did I get into roller derby? When I was a kid, they used to have the old school roller derby on TV every Saturday morning. The 3 staples of my TV watching growing up in the early 70s were Roller Derby, Studio Wrestling (not like this big overblown stuff they have now), and the Ernest Angley Miracle Crusade (I used to go around smacking my sisters on the head and telling them they were being healed.. which was basically all Ernest Angley did- and still does!). Roller Derby was amazing back in the day... men and women flying around a banked track, beating the crap out of each other... having match races to settle arguments... people flying over the railing... and you'd always have a crazy member of the audience who would try and beat up the bad guys/girls when they flew over the rail.

Roller Derby seemed to go dormant for a very long time. I mean, where are you going to find a banked track and people crazy enough to want to skate around it? I guess that the last few years it has made a comeback as "cult entertainment" or simple kitsch.. a combination of women doing things for women and yet another example of neo-feminism. Back when I was doing Free For All, I had interviewed the head of a group called Queen Bee Productions. They were sponsoring a night of the Vagina Monologues, and the group was very pro-empowerment of women. So ever since then, I've been getting their electronic newsletter... and one of the artiles talked about the NEO Rock n Rollers.

So last month I talked Tammy into going. She thought there would maybe be 30 people there since it was "cult entertainment"... we were both shocked that the Summit County Fairgrounds parking lot was packed. We went inside and there this wave of crazy energy going on... a bunch of women in Roller skates and wild outfits going around a flat track. That's the thing that I found most different classic roller derby and this modern stuff... the banked track with the railing gave the action more of a visceral feel, even on TV. But in person, I dunno.. a banked track might not allow the viewer to see the action as well. On the flat track, you can actually sit right on the floor as the girl go around the track, and you take your life into your own hands if someone falls down and lands on you.

I love the marketing that goes on with this modern version of roller derby.. the NEO girls have taken to using classic albums as the theme for their bouts. The one we went to used the INXS record Hits as its theme, and the next bout will use the Pretenders Learning to Crawl as the theme (they call it Learning to Brawl). Using the Pretenders is only right, since Chrissie Hynde is from Akron, and she has her Vegiterranean Restuarant in the area.

I had such a good time at the bout... the people in the audience all seemed to have some connection to one of the skaters, and even though the NEO girls won by 100 points, it was fun to just be a part of the goings on. It is all a form of twisted theatre, but in hearing the girls tweet about their experiences, the bumps and bruises are real. It's more authentic than classic roller derby- there isn't all of the fake fighting and stuff... in fact, I think safety is a major concern for the women. But the competition is still there.

You can check out my photos of my night at the derby here. There's another guy who takes excellent photos of the action as well, and you can see his work here.

I know that one of the women I work with, this little petite thing, was saying she could never do roller derby because the women are big brawlers who would pound her into the floor. Well, they might pound her into the floor, but these women are not a bunch of mannish Amazons who would scare you on a darkened street. Perhaps like beach volleyball, the sport plays up the allure of sexuality and in a sense, that 50s pulp fiction sense of being the bad girls. It's entertainment that is without doubt going to catch on. Right now, the film Whip It is out, and with people like Drew Barrymmore and Ellen Page and classic bad girl Julliette Lewis on board, it could give the sport the bump it needs to get from being cultish to more mainstream entertainment. Of course for the old school roller derby person, you can always check out Raquel Welch in Kansas City Bomber!



I would encourage all of you to check it out if there is a team in your area... and by the looks of things, teams are sprouting up all over the country!