'73 vs. '76

I was riding back on the train from nyc on Saturday evening, hungover like a pair of old balls. (ESS) After buying a Moe’s burrito in Penn Station with my last cash and then paying for a strawberry banana smoothie with quarters, I was able to nestle in to my back-left seat on the Amtrak Regional (official sponsor of wilosblog) and pay for my sins from the night before like a whimpering dog with Stockholm Syndrome. For some reason, always drawn back to the monster that beats my ass the short day after a long night.

The first part of the train ride was spent drifting in and out of sleep, nurtured gently by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Talking Heads, Van the Man, and Janis Joplin. Upon finally rising, with a splitting headache and doing my best to keep a volcanic eruption of Moe’s at bay, I began to search frantically for something, anything to overshadow the two small men in the front of my head tugging on my eyeballs like sling shots. No money for a beer, no magical treats to kill the pain, and not a soul awake to talk to. I ended up, however, stumbling upon a gem, and it laid the tracks for this stupid blahg post.

It turns out that you can purchase movies on the iTunes and, better news, I had 1 movie stored on my computer. Upon reflection, it turns out that I purchased this flick during my wilos ’10 days (OBT), during the era of absolutely disgusting wook beard, obscene amounts of Pink Floyd, chasing Pyanic up and down the east coast, unemployment, and rarely wearing shoes. Although that was, to say the least, a phase in my life that some might, and many have, frowned upon (sorry Dad), it did leave one lasting imprint in the form of permanent access to Almost Famous.

Hands down one of my favorite movies of all time. 100%. And, I am not just tossing around that phrase lightly. It actually is. I will even go as far as to side with Bill Simmons and say that it was one of the better movies of the 2000s. Not by any measure of exquisite cinematography, or “top flight” (whatever that is) acting cast, but it was a straight up great fucking movie. Great dialogue, great message, great acting, and awesome soundtrack.
 
In my humble opinion, Russell Hammond is one of the coolest characters in recent film. Or, at least, the shit that I have seen. My friend and Editor-in-Chief OBT and I had a brief discussion prompted by a text from me to him during my viewing: “if you had to pick, who would you say is cooler – Russell Hammond or Randal “Pink” Floyd?” It was a tough question, and a fun one to ponder. OBT shot back almost immediately, and he nailed it on the head: “Close call but I’d give the nod to Pink since Russell denied the story to Rolling Stone, even though he later made up for it.” 100% spot on. A very, very disappointing move on the part of Stillwater’s finest, but hey - what can you do? After all, Russell was a golden god, and when you have stood on top of a roof and in front of a crowd and above a swimming pool, that that shit will get to your head. Trust me, I know from experience. Duhhh… (Me! Me! Me! Me!)

You know what else? William Miller, the aspiring rock journalist from San Diego, is also one of the coolest dudes, in my opinion, on the silver screen. An absolute fucking stud. Guy hops on a bus Los Angeles, and cruises his way across the USA with a fricken rock and roll band; all the while losing his virginity, going to an acid party in Topeka, Kansas, and having a near-death experience on the band’s airplane over Tupulo, Mississippi. Oh ya, not to mention that he wrote an article that ended up on the cover of, as lead singer Jeff Bebe remarks, “Rolling Stone fucking Magazine!” All, at the ripe age of 15. Damn. Talk about a stat line. As Russell remarks as the plane is going down: “rock and roll.”

Back to the Russell v. Pink discourse - after a far-too-long interruption/samble ramble, we get to the actual substance of this blahg post (bahgs are my life, CDM). The second exchange between yours truly and OBT, was prompted by another text message with simple words but a thought provoking question: "if you could pick one specific year in which to be 17 years old, what year would that be?"

This is a question that I have often pondered. In my opinion, 17 is a pretty awesome year in one’s life. Perhaps one of the most formative years. You are still, most likely, under the guise of your parents’ roof and support, but you have been in high school for 3 years, can drive, and have hopefully been exposed to some type of party scene (can’t stop – CJB). When I was 12 at summer camp, I remember someone posed a question to our counselor: “did you like college or high school better?” His response still rings true: “high school. Hands down. You’re doing the same shit, but it’s against all of the rules.” This somewhat “rebellious” nature of being a 17 year-old heightens the fun. Also, in my opinion, at 17 one has reached the peak of his coolness. I don’t mean to say that you need to be the absolute big man on campus, but here’s a thought: you have had ample time in your life to ascertain some pillar of coolness - whether that is being funny, sarcastic, athletic, musical, or buying beer/dip/cigs/porno for your friends. You had almost two decades to do this, and no “re-invention” of yourself in college will be able to veil the fact that you missed out on the glorious years of innocence, naiveté, and “invincibility” (hah!) that were high school.

So, once again, back on task. 17. When would you want to be 17? My mother was 18 in the Summer of ’69, and that would have been pretty dope (hiyo!). Woodstock, protests, a huge shift in music - all that good shit. However, upon reflection, the 60s might have been a bit too fluid for yours truly. Had I been 17 in the Summer of ’69, I would, most likely, be now living on an Indian Reservation in Arizona harvesting peyote, weaving my own clothes out of hemp, and going by the Indian name “Whispering Wilos,” given to me by my newly adopted tribe. Not that that would be a bad thing, at all. But… perhaps a different wavelength than I would prefer to be on at age 60.

1973. That’s my answer. The same year that William Miller set off on his journey, in Almost Famous, to follow Stillwater across the USA. Damn, that seems like a great fucking era. It appears as though people placed a premium on being happy. My Editor-in-Chief, OBT, choose 1976. The same year that Pink, Benny, Donny, Mel, Slater, Wooderson, and Mitch Kramer had their epic day that spanned from their last day of school, to riding around in cars chaying, to the Emporium, and ending at the Moon Tower after Pickford’s party got broken up by his parents. Another great choice. Good tunes, cheap Samoa, very little rules whatsoever, and loose-fitting clothing.

But ’73, man, that’s my fuckin jam. The level of headiness was off the charts. And I don’t mean headiness in the sense of dropping low-grade acid for breakfast and prancing around in a forest of pine trees. That is 100% not heady. I’m talking Penny Lane headiness. Thinking with one’s “head.” Figuring shit out, and trying to define things in one’s own way. If the vessel for that figuring-shit-out came through music, drugs, art, rebellion, travelling, or finding something “real” and drinking a red cup at a party full of Topeka high school students with braces, then so be it. I guess it was a time of freedom. Music defined much of that era for folks like William Miller; and, even though Lester Bangs proclaimed to William that he: “missed out on rock n' roll, it's over. You got here just in time for the death rattle, the last rope,” William’s sister Anita reminds us that rock music will always be a rock on her way out the door: “One day you’ll be cool. Look under your bed, it will set you free.” A line that Penny drops early on with a twinge of grace, and that Russell confidently utters when the plane is going down sums it all up: “It’s all happening.”

Whichever year one were to choose is obviously only for fun, but I believe that it tells a lot about oneself. However, as my good buddy CdS reminded me: “I wouldn’t change a damn thing wilos!” He is right. First off, because I was the man in high school (duhhhh….), but also, because it is what is it. To steal a line from Russell Hammond and modernize his words: “In 11 years it’s gonna be 2023 – think about THAT!!”

First Days Blues

Upon starting any new endeavor – in this case a yob – I am always brought back to a classic line from Die Hard, one that my buddy JDB likes to use: “welcome to the party, pal!...... you’re late!” Similarly, navigating the first days’ barrage of rules, regulations, directions, and misdirections, I am always reminded of Don Rickles’ epic rant from the film Dirty Work, a favorite of the consummate orator of interweb communications, ESS. For the infant-sized handful of loyal readers who were on-board during the ’09 hatchling stages of this samble of rambles on Al Gore’s interwebs, you might recall that a book that JDB gave me, Rickles’ Book, was the inspiration for wilosblog. Don Rickles is the effin man. I mean, shit, the guy chayed hard with Sinatra. Can’t really top that.

After the first couple days of any new job, I would venture to say that many people experience a feeling of unrest similar to that of the elderly lady in Happy Gilmore, who so tragicallt gets hit by a dislodged air conditioning unit.

Essentially, as was the case when I commenced this new yob in January, I was greeted with the standard, reverse/anti David Byrne Naïve Melody moment: i.e. this most certainly is not the place. In these moments, however, it is essential to not let the pyanic become too widespread. PGroove’s Walking In Place tends to do the trick. (Hyeady tryacks! Yya myan!)

As with many – your humble author included – in these moments of pyanic, there are immediate and constant flashes to the quandary of: “OMG OMG, where on earth will I be in 5-7 years??” I, for one, know exactly where I will be in 5-7 years. Well, not the exact physical location nor the specific company for which I will work. However, I can tell you this: I will be doing the exact same shit that I have been doing for the last decade: hanging out with my friends and family, playing and watching sports, searching for powder in the mountains, hunting native trout in cold-water streams and, most likely, still embarrassing myself, with no shame, from time to time. Hopefully less frequently. This is not meant to come across as a “the world is my oyster” statement; nor, should it be interpreted as a laissez faire attitude towards life. I do genuinely enjoy working hard on things that interest me and, in my next job, I am confident that I will be doing something that I genuinely enjoy. For now, however, I must admit that it is tough to get fired up about proofreading 60 pages of numbers. Thank goodness that we have The Saga of the Intriguingly Good Looking Girl (web log post to follow), who walks by my desk at a constant rate. And, as they say in Casablanca: “we’ll always have [the Mens Room].”

Going back to my earlier statement, the world is not my oyster. I know that. What I also know, however, is that Tony Montana had it right: “The world is yours.” ;) Look out for those treacherous mountains!

...That Just Happened...

Now, for my 16 loyal readers, I will try to post very brief anecdotes of random things that happen, that intrigue wilos. To be honest, they most likely will not intrigue you. However, if you really think long and hard about it: a donut with no holes is a danish. But, a flute with no holes, is not a flute. Without further adieu, the first "...That Just Happened..."

I could have sworn that, as I was leaning back in my chair to yawn, the dood whose back is about 3-and-a-half feet from mine just leaned back, yawned, and audibly whispered in my ear: “yyyyyyyeeaaaaahhh baby…” Should I be worried? Excited? Yup. I’m excited. We need more guys like this. Kinda like a 6th man off the bench. An energy and enthusiasm guy. Every team needs one. A Brian Scalabrine.

The #2 Man in the Office

Today at work, I sauntered my way into the office bathroom. The office bathroom is never fun, and always filled with quirky surprises. Today’s surprise, however, above-and-beyond eclipsed my standards of the weirdest shit (ha!) that I have seen in my 24 years and 11 months of using the toilet.
Today, in the office bathroom, the guy next to me was taking, yes, let this settle in, a stand-up dump. Yup. I said it. Dood was dumping in the vertical position. The only other option I can wrap my head around is that he was filling up a coffee mug with some Santorum. As most would likely attest, the office bathroom is a world of its own. Not sure about the Ladies Room, but the Mens room is a pretty funky place. Lotta shit goes down in there. Literally. Hiyo! But, seriously. You hear some weird ass noises in there, and we’re not talking about those generally associated with using the restroom: grunts, moans, sighs, yips, yelps, sobs, bobs, etc etc. I mean, what the fuck is going on there that I am missing? Sitting through someone else’s dump gives the soundtrack/symphonic chorus of what I would imagine a party in the back of a Wesvalia van at Woodstock used to produce. The bathroom noises are analogous to everything from, but not limited to: chugging liquids (huh?), boking smowls, chopping up and gettin down on a gator tail, euphoric giggles induced by boom booms or doses, and the restless body movements that, to my limited experiential knowledge, were exclusive to coitus. This morning, it literally sounded like the Nitrous Mafia was rehearsing for their lot scene at Panic’s upcoming Wood Tour (Silver Spring shyows were awe-shum, myan), but I saw neither a tank nor balloons. What the fuck was making that hissing sound? Does the dude from accounting have an office pet snake? Lotta rough horseplay goin on in there.

Back to the original idea here: stand-up dump? Who fricken stands up when they go #2? Granted, one of my friends, Bug Mooseantler, is trending towards the majority of his dumps being in true “reverse-cowgirl” style (he likes to set down his laptop on the shelf and browse the interwebs); but, standing up? Where the fuck are we, on a camping trip? “Hey myan, you need me to toss you some moss to clean up over there? Be sure to bury the TP at least 300 yards away from any water source! Cya back the campsite. I’ll save you an extra Smore!”

Oh well. At least it’s not what I just found out, after running into an old teacher/coach last Tuesday: here’s how the kids at my hike skewl are using the school bathrooms these days: white off of the fricken urinals! I mean, come on. Grow a pair. Be an athlete. If you can’t make it through math class without taking a gummy, you’ve got yourself some serious problems. Whatever happened to ducking out during a free period to a cul-de-sac for a quick pull on the one-ie? Fucking kids these days, with their walkmen, nintendo, and casual bumps on a Tuesday morning. That noise wouldn’t have flown in my day. We had fun the good old fashion way: like beating up kids that did coke in high school bathrooms. (I’m theman). Also, we didn’t have any of those high-tech birth control methods. Like pulling out. (Dirty Work)

Damn

damn. the new sportcenter field anchor, shannon spake, is a fuckin babe. damn

I am back

And I'm in town to play Episcopal, dumb ass.

Personal Days

“Hi, Jean, today I will be out of the office. I will be taking a personal day.”

If you substitute “Mom” for “Jean," "in your basement" for "out of the office," and “day of Wilos” for “personal day,” you got my favorite day of the week. (They are also tied for first place with MONdays! Ain’t that right, MONtos! Ya, MON!). Days of Wilos, also known as personal days, occur only on days that end in “y,” and I have had about 225 consecutive Days of Wilos since handing in my senior thesis. Pretty badass, huh?The Day of [insert name] stems from the Greek word fraternity, which is the most awesome-est thing to be invented since Easy Mac, NHL ’94 for Sega Genesis, and lambskin condoms. For the record, I was in a fraternity in college, we were far and away the best on campus, and I recently threw away all of my t-shirts accept for my frat shirts. I mean, fuck, what kinda chick doesn’t wanna hook up with a dude rocking some grey newbies, Mountain Khakis, an Alpha Beta Kickball tournament shirt, and a Kavu visor? Especially if he has scraggly facial hair, is from Texas, has a Skoal ring in his back pocket, and a nice set of dimples. It also wouldn’t hurt if he was the big varsity quarterback in high school.

Anyways, back to the subject of this entry, I must say I am having a good hair day. I mean, I need to cut my pubes. I mean, Lean Cuisine Swedish Meatballs are the silicone tits!

Days of [insert name] are great. Absolutely fucking great. Like, for example, taking one of those really sensual poops. Huh?? I really need to stop leaving my computer open while I fondle my sweaters. But the days are really great. In essence, a Day of You is a day where you do whatever the fuck you want. Literally, anything you want. It usually occurs after a long bender of drinking, most commonly after a long day-drinking session which segways into a raucous night, and such heaters are usually aided by the help of various performance enhancing scenes or salts.

The subsequent Sunday is accompanied by waking up to an apartment with broken bottles, paintballs splattered on the door, a hole in the drywall sculpted by your roommate’s head when he fell up the stairs, and a hangover that, if it were analogized to a soup, would be vichyssoise. Your plans for the day will most likely include, but are not limited to, a session where you and your roommates sit on the couch in your boxers and ripped undershirts trading war stories from the night before and attempting to get back together with your girlfriends via text message, watching football, TJ Kushmanzada-ing, having a nice greasy breakfast at around 4:15pm, and taking tiger snoozes in your parents basement until they kick you out because they want to watch Mad Men and you smell like the inside of the Small Mammal House at the National Zoo.

And that is just the precursor to your Day of You. Once you relieve some tension, listen to Trampled by Turtles, and hibernate for the night, you wake up to the bright lights of the reality that is Monday morning, take a piss, chug a bottle of water, call in sick to work (or, in the case of your humble author, give your poster of Sarah Palin a kiss on the lips), and go back to bed. To quote Devin the Dude, “oh what a job this is.”

Take today, for example. Wilos had a whole shit list of things to do, such as, seeing the light of day, taking a shower, moving into his apartment, getting his first haircut since May, creating his whole high school football team in Madden, and, becoming an NFL quarterback who doubles as a firefighter/astronaut. However, upon waking up from his second nap at 4:05pm, Wilos rubbed his sleepy eyes, looked at himself in the reflection of his parents flatscreen tv, and said, “fuck it. I need a Day of Me.” So, what did he do? Went the fuck back to sleep, that’s what he did. Then, he played some NBA Live 2003, watched some Californication, had a couple of Strawberry Banana smoothies, and ordered an “I Am Legend” poster from allposters.com. Duh…

Anyways, I think you get the point. Basically, every two-thirds of the days-in-a-year-in-a-row or so, you might need a Day of You. And, you know what Yogi Berra said, right? “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!” So, when your alarm clock awakens you just before you are about to release your tension during a lapdance in your dream, turn that shit off! Because, after all, if you don’t go back to that special place where, as the Boss so eloquently described, “you can’t remember, but you can’t forget,” you just might go into the office with a lot of built up tension.

Just be sure to clean up.

The Chat Scene

So, I guess this is moving a little bit into the “social commentary” aspect of the blogosphere, which I never really wanted to get into, because my opinion on the topic of anything holds about as much importance as the four Mott’s apple sauces that I just housed do to anyone who might be so bored at work that they are reading the musings of Wilos. I mean, shit, guess what Wilos thinks about the faux pas of facebook or the new Martha Stewart Cookbook! Damn, Yonder Mountain’s new album is pretty dank (heady, bra! And, this one is true, so you should care). On a side note, when I listen to music when writing I tend to ramble, so bear with me or go back to redtube.

Anyways, the reason that I am writing on a subject of such importance as the “Chat Scene” is because, well, CdM, I just love pickin up some new scene. Also, I was talking to my old skydiving buddy MJB, one of the all-time great party bois. This dude is so cool, that he is up there with Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, and Moses, and Wilos as the Top 5 coolest guys in the history of history. On a side note, thank you for happening, history, for without you my thesis wouldn't have been possible. Anyways, I said, “hey mon, my good skydiving buddy, I’m bored, just partyin by myself, have no job or friends, and want to write something stupid in my blog. What should I write about?” And my good buddy said, “hey mon, just write about the old AOL chat scene!”

And I said, “shit! Why the hell has it taken me two paragraphs to introduce this topic?” So, anyways, let’s get to the point. I used to love those AOL chats. This entry probably won’t be very good. We used to get our buddies together back in sixth grade, and it was very exclusive if you were asked by LaxRat16 to join "Sweet, Sweet 6th Graders." We would shoot the shit on topics ranging from football, to which chicks were hot and which had acne (I still do), to football, to which websites had the best (fake) topless Spice Girls pictures, and who just sprouted their first pubic hair (yuck!). By the way, a bunch of friends and I were the Spice Girls for school Halloween in 4th grade. Pretty bold move.

Then, then came the chats with the girls. Now these were fucking awesome. If you got invited by the hot blonde chick who had hit puberty three years before everyone else and had breasts the size of Granny Smith Apples, then you had fucking made it. You were set. You might as well have already accepted your bid to the best fraternity on campus six years later (sick!). Now these chats were where the most important topics on the planet were discussed: Which dance we would be attending on Friday. Whose parents would be willing and cool enough to host the spin-the-bottle party on Saturday. What was the latest horrendous inside joke or nickname that the girls had ingeniously discovered, and that us guys would have to laugh at and pretend was funny. If you weren’t chatting, you might as well resign yourself to a life of getting wedgies by the lacrosse team or getting stuffed into lockers by the football team, and wait until college to try to reinvent yourself as having an ounce of coolness.

Lastly, and these were my favorite, were the “open” chats. The chats that you had to check the box that said “I certify that I am 18” to enter. Now, if you have a pair of testicles and had access to the internet in 6th grade, and you were as sick as my friends and I were at the ripe age of 12, then you know exactly what I am talking about. You had a lot of options, here. You could go into the standard adult chats, the lesbian chats, threesome chats, and even downright weird chats. So, you would lock the door, tell your parents you were studying Latin vocabulary, and pop into your chat of choice.

You would start off by either asking for or responding to the standard “a/s/l?” question. Now, to amateurs, this might be a tricky question, but to those well-versed in the language of desperately-seeking cyber sex, this constitutes an immediate, mandatory roll call for chatters to divulge their “age, sex, and location” Now, let me give you a sample response had I replied truthfully: “12, male, sitting in the top bunk with the lights off so I have time to react if my parents come in.” However, you would naturally spit out something such as “19, m, Los Angeles.” I don’t know why, but it was always LA for me. Musta been the sunny weather. So, you’d hook up with SexxxyBabe6969 who was 21, f, Fort Lauderdale, and open up a private instant message window.

Now, as sexy babe describes her voluptuous and Coke-bottle curvy body, you are combing the Abercrombie and Fitch website for a picture of a stud in the latest fashion to email to your new girlfriend. On the other hand, sexy babe was most likely an overweight, middle-aged lady eating Dominoes Chicken Kickers and guzzling Pepsi out of a 2 liter bottle. Or, worse yet, a rail-thin, middle-aged man who was doing keyboard dusters and running a GPS search on my computer. Hmmm, pretty nice “off-campus house at USC, Wilos, which happens to be located on the east coast...” And, the conversations that transpired from that magic moment are not appropriate for this blog. However, I never got much further then the a/s/l introduction. Never had to. Hmmm.

Anyways, I have provided far too much information on the subject of middle school cyber sex, but I have no shame in general, and nobody knows who this anonymous writer from Wichita, Kansas is, right? Anyways, to wrap it up (wear those raincoats, kids!), it appears as though a revival of the various “Chat Scenes” is upon us. The leaders at the forefront of this glorious movement happen to be Skype, g-chat, smoke signals, and craigslist.

Craigslist, you ask? Just search for my ad under “19 year-old stud looking for hot MILF affair” in the Los Angeles section. I still rock the A and F long-sleeve golf shirt in my pic. Haven’t aged a bit.

The Endless Summer: In Search of the Perfect Rave

First off, I would like to start with an earnest apology to my six loyal readers who have been so fervently craving a steady dose of Wilos’ Blog over the past month and a half. Not surprisingly, I have been a huge bum who has lacked the motivation to “find my voice” and engage in the art of fine composition. In other words, I have been too fucking lazy to “get up off the couch,” “take the Steak and Egg out of my mouth,” “walk up the stairs” to “find my computer” and open a Microsoft Word document. After all, the sole purpose of my computer’s existence of late has been for looking up crunchy concert dates online, watching bukkake with newly-initiated DC Unemployment Line Member CdM, and chopping it. Not to bukkake, that is.

Anyways, now that I have scared off any of the female readership (if the bukkake comment didn’t do it, I would assume that the reference to doing “guy stuff” did…), I can really speak from the heart about all the cool stuff I have been doing the past six weeks, all the hot babes I have been bringing back to my Aero bed, and how cool I am in general. In other words, how utterly pathetic I have been, the bare bones of my intimacy, and how much of a waste of space I am in general. Before I provide whatever amount of details that my slothful mind can produce at this hour, I will give you a quick stat line on the glorious month that has been Rocktober: I have visited my alma mater (college, that is) on three separate occasions for a total of six nights, my alma mater (high school, that is) on three separate occasions, one of which was the opening football game, to which I had to trick my Egyptian friend into going because my high school friends wouldn’t go, and another was the school’s centennial party, where I faceplanted on the d-floor in front of the Headmaster - this after sticking my hands in multiple cakes (desert cakes, those are, not “bu”-kkakes) and bird feeding myself, been fishing twice, hunting once, been to New York a couple of times, saw Widespread/Allman Brothers, P Groove, Yonder Mountain, and then Railroad Earth/Yonder Mountain – all in the span of one week, been to Nantucket, tried Molly (just kidding!), gained about 15 pounds, and a whole bunch of other cool shit that I can’t think of right now. Now I am getting ready to go to a Springsteen concert with my Mom tomorrow night and email some college buddies to see what the undergrads are up to for Fall Break. Man, it’s been a great summer so far.

Looking back on that, I will allow myself to pat myself on the back. Hell of a season, pal, and it’s not even the All-Star Break yet. Thanks, Wilos. How kind of you. I guess I’m too tired (guess the 14 hours of sleep per night isn’t enough) to go into detail about my totally awesome life at the moment, and I am also looking forward to crushing a dozen or so more episodes of Sleeper Cell (great Shotime show about counter-terrorism – a more intellectual 24 if you will) and Community (funny new show on NBC with Chevy Chase – a great line, after Chevy has failed to come up with a “school song” for their community college: “I’m sorry, Jill, I lied. I’m no more of a song-writer than you, or… Billy Joel. I just can’t do it.”) before takin a nice, long Tiger Snooze. However, in light of the grim prospects for respectable uss in the near future due to my horrendous game, I will leave you all with a quote from our high school’s unofficial class mentor, on the subject of taking down rather large women: “Hogging is fine, from time to time, but after a while, it’s no longer hogging. It’s what you do.”


But hey, man, now that I’m pushing 220, I guess if I ever hook up with a girl it’ll be hogging for her… Ha!

Fit for Fall

This week must be a week of epiphanies for me. As I was helping my Grandmother clean out her garage the other day, I happened upon a scale. So, naturally, I stepped on it. “Holy shit!” I gasped under my breath, and, had my Grandma not already turned off her hearing aid out of boredom from my B.S. reasons for not yet being employed, she definitely would have heard this. I quickly looked around to make sure nobody had seen, let the scale recalibrate to 0, and tried it again. Damn. I stealthily snapped a picture on my camera phone for evidence. Ladies and Gentleman, as Ed Harris would say in The Rock, “I shit you not.” This was the reading on the scale:

Wow. I am officially the size of an NFL running back.

If you will pardon my French for a second, when the fuck did that happen?? Although, because of the team’s epic losing streak, it is somewhat embarrassing for me to admit that, my freshman year in college, I played a sport that required you to make weight twice-a-week below 172 pounds. Granted, that was quite a stretch for me, and because my playing weight in high school was around 185 I was forced to spend many a morning running in sweats and spitting in a trash can to shed the last few ounces, but still. Fuck me if I’m wrong because I’m not a genius or anything, but if you do the math here, that means I have put on 40 pounds since the end of my competitive athletic career.

Once again, please excuse the language, but holy shit! Do you know how much that is? That’s almost 25% of my old body weight. Do you know what weighs 40 pounds? A full sack of dog food. A 5-gallon bucket of water. A 40-pound dumb bell. A 5 year-old kid. Think of that. Think of taking a 5 year-old, and swallowing him whole with no digestion. That's essentially what I did. Weird.

I was talking to a buddy of mine from school on the phone tonight who has been complicit in this non-stop, 24/7 life of hot-and-cold-running eating, sleeping, partying, and being in the “supine” position since we handed in our theses, and he came up with a good idea: “Hey Wilos,” he said. “You can look at it as though you are getting ready to hibernate for the winter! I watched a show on Animal Planet about that today. Basically, think of it as though you’ve been going around, gathering berries for your great winter slumber.” Come to think of it, he’s basically right. I (have been, and) am preparing for a long winter to be spent hibernating in my parents’ basement (which we call the “Womb” because of its soundproof walls and dearth of windows that would allow any natural light to seep in) wherein I will probably breeze through a season or three of a TV show on DVD each winter week.

I guess it makes sense. All weekend, my dear sweet Grandmother, who, at 86 years-young, still skis 14 days over Christmas, plays tennis with far better consistency than yours truly, and lifts her small weights every day to stay in shape, was dropping subtle hints that I finally realized were not just cute coincidences but were aimed at saying, in so many words, “Wilos, lose some fucking weight!!” Some of these included: after my sister and I explained to Grandma that the old golf cart was running very slowly, “Well, dear, that’s because there’s so much weight on it…” and, (twice) after playing tennis, “Well, dear, the reason you are so sweaty and need to put down a towel on the chair for lunch is because that’s probably a lot more exercise than you’ve gotten in a while…” As Adam Sandler once so aptly put, “whoa, you gotta love your Grandma.” Bless her heart.

Basically, after taking a step back (waaaay back, so I could properly fit in the mirror) and looking at my reflection, I realized that, with the exception of the occasional jog or exercise-bike ride at school, and perhaps a few 1-2 week stints of lifting weights, I really hadn’t worked out much since the winter of my freshman year of college. In hike skewl I played three sports and was always training for those, and, in fact, like any meaty high school jock in America, I loved to lift. I got pretty big senior year, and my friends jokingly called me “God the Bod” (did I mentioned that I was The Man in high school?). I was even such a tool that I would wear wife beaters underneath my shirt and would jump at any opportunity to remove said shirt (I also enjoyed rocking the occasional lax pinney at the beach like a complete chatch), but that is for another entry that I will write in the near future.

Anyways, since I am a man and, therefore, am as inherently lazy as a sloth, I basically rode out my physical fitness for almost the whole four years of college. And, to be honest, I stayed in alright shape. Sure, I got a tinge of the “frat fat” – a thin layer around what used to be a 6-pack, the patented Galvin Double Chin, and experienced a bit of the redistribution of muscle weight into fat that allows for the transition into a prime example of a washed-up athlete’s body without putting on any significant weight. However, come the time of my senior spring, the jig was up. I had hung on to the fruits of past labors for too long, and the well of metabolism eventually ran dry.

I remember hitting the Big Deuce (two hundo) upon returning from my post-graduation trip to Greece, and, as one my friends noted, “Wilos, you have hit a benchmark that is, for an athlete who is trying to bulk up, one of the happiest days of his life, but for an ex-athlete, one of the most dreadful.” In light of my frame and the circumstances, two bills wasn’t all that bad, and I thought I could turn it around pronto. But, as the dog days of summer wore on, apparently the lbs started to add up.

And sure, I guess I look a little bigger (a number of people this summer have said, “Wow, Wilos, you’re lookin’ thick man, you been hittin the weights?” and I chuckle a bit on the inside), but in reality I’m not that fat. I guess I like to look at it as more along the lines of the “Phat” (pretty hot and tempting) that Chris Tucker popularized in the classic Rush Hour. I do not need to heed Dante’s warning and “all hope abandon” as I enter the fall of 2009. I think as long as I stop sleeping 14 hours a day, eating loads of crap, imbibing large quantities of highly-caloric alcohol on a nightly basis, lying down all the time, and if I add in a little bit of exercise, I should be fine. That, or, maybe someone can sign me up for Nutrisystem for an early Christmas present.