Newsbreak: Fabio is STILL Creepy

[Warning: This blog may not make any sense at all to anyone under 40. Too may references to obscure folks from the 80s. Sorry. I'll try to be more relevant tomorrow.]

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but I have never been asked to pose for the cover of a romance novel. In fact, to the best of my knowledge I have never been photographed in a half-open, billowing pirate shirt, standing on an oceanside cliff next to an ominous dead tree. And I have certainly never cradled a swooning, buxom plantation heiress in my arms while wearing leather pants. But Fabio has. Numerous times.

I never understood Fabio's appeal, and have never hung around with a woman who could explain it to me. I mean, everyone knows that real men don't need hair. And Fabio's one attempt to pull off the shaved head look for a novel cover didn't work out all that well:


My favorite college Spanish teacher once told me that she had a crush on the actor Richard Boone. He was certainly not handsome in the Cary Grant sense of the word, but at least I can see his appeal. With his gruff voice and sense of comfort in his own skin, he did project a certain charisma. But Fabio? I'm not seeing it. He's just creepy.

However, I have to admit that I do get a kick out of the current Toyota ad campaign where guys like Fabio, Erik Estrada, and Lou Ferrigno are showing up to buy new cars. In fact, that's what prompted this line of thought. I started thinking about which washed-up 80s stars I'd choose if I were the Ad Campaign Director. Richard Boone is not available, since he's dead, but the guy on the right might be. Any ideas who he is? (The answer will be revealed below.)

My first choice would oviously be James Doohan, but alas, he has also passed on. Gary Coleman, same deal. Zulu as Kono? Gone.

Ray J. Johnson? Please, not that. But what about Roger E. Mosley? Yeah, I like him...except that the car shoppers are calling the celebs by their real name, and I suspect that Mr. Mosley is still better known as "TC". Hmm, what about Higgy Baby?

Toni Tennille? The Unknown Comic? The Pink Power Ranger? Sammy Sosa? The curly-haired Doctor Who?

No. I don't think so. After much pondering, I've concluded that Toyota has probably done about as well as they could do. Fabio is creepy, sure...but he fits the general theme of the campaign. Everybody likes Ferrigno, and Estrada remains appealing as well (especially after his appearance on "My Name is Earl".) I think they should go with who they've got.

But the other guy I was thinking about (from the photo above) is Estrada's old CHiPs partner Larry "Jon" Wilcox. He's not as recognizable as "Ponch", but he's apparently a great guy. A former Marine who is now hugely involved in charities, Wilcox should be a role model for all former TV stars. He seems like a guy you'd enjoy hanging out with. Sort of an Anti-Fabio, if you will.

And I guess that's all I have to say on the subject. Despite my earlier comments, though, I'm not actually opposed to appearing on any book covers, so if you need a crewcut male model with no particular visual appeal, give me a call. (No pirate shirts, though. Sorry.) And have a great day!

RIP, Leslie Nielsen

I owe the world a huge apology. This is from his obituary (the italics are mine):

AP—Leslie Nielsen, the actor best known for starring in such comedies as Airplane! and the Naked Gun film franchise, died Sunday of complications from pneumonia at a hospital near his home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.

“We are sadden by the passing of beloved actor Leslie Nielsen, probably best remembered as Sgt. Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant of Police Squad, but who enjoyed a more than 60-year career in motion pictures and television," said a statement from Nielsen's family released through his rep. "His condition seemed to be improving, until he read a blog suggesting that Jar Jar Binks would be chosen to portray Lt. Drebbin in a follow-up movie series. That was more than he could handle."

A very sad day for all of us. Please note that President Obama has declared this day as "Watch Every Single Airplane and Naked Gun Clip on YouTube Day", and that corporations are required to allow employees to spend all day watching videos if they want to. Please respect this decree, and please say a prayer of thanks for all the joy Mr. Nielsen gave us.

Shock Therapy

One of the axioms of physical training is that your muscles adapt to new stresses placed upon them. Conversely, a completely homogenous routine is not productive -- if you do the same workout every day, there's nothing new to provide that "shock" to the muscles, and no growth (adaptation) occurs. Or as Conan O'Brien once said "That which does not kill you makes you stronger."

Though the jury's still out on whether it killed me or not, I'm thinking that this weekend has a good chance of making me stronger. We'll see.

I started Saturday morning with weightlifting at the gym. Because I wanted to do some running right after I lifted, I went to the 24-Hr Fitness facility at Belleview and Santa Fe, which provides easy access to the Platte River Trail. I'm not sure why, but it seems that each 24-Hr Fitness facility has a unique set of exercise equipment; no two gyms have exactly the same kinds of machines. So, Shock #1 came from working out on weight machines that provide different motions than I'm used to. (And since the new motion is kinda fun, I probably hit it harder than I would have on my "familiar" machines.)

Shock #2 came on the run. I'm really trying to hold my "Chi-Running" style, with a midfoot strike and good posture. It's not habitual yet, and it takes concentration...so even though I'm experiencing less knee pain than I did with the old heel-strike stride, my leg and core muscles seem to be working harder. Between holding form, resisting the urge to walk and rest, and trying to make it back to my car in time for my next appointment (more about that in a minute), I was pretty beat up by the end of the run. It was only 5 miles, but it felt twice that far.

Immediately after the run, I jumped back in the car and drove over to where I had agreed to meet my buddy Kim for a bike ride out to Red Rocks. So there's Shock #3.

We had done this ride several times during the summer. But it had been a long time since I had been back on the bike (other than some low-intensity rides in the living room). Kim and I enjoy the social aspect of the ride, so there are opportunities to chat...but we also challenge each other to push the pace. Our route takes us over about a 25-mile course, with multiple killer hills. The road from downtown Morrison up to the amphitheater doesn't look all that steep, but I run out of granny gears in a hurry. A minute before we made the turn into the park, we had been chatting casually -- now we were both huffing and puffing and still not getting enough oxygen.

Red Rocks is bad enough, but then there's the hill over the Dinosaur Ridge hogback, the climb up to the Bear Creek Lake dam, and the ascent back up out of the valley to return to the Wal-Mart where we had met. My legs were burning...and after the weightlifting earlier, my arms weren't exactly feeling fresh, either.

The weather was spectacular though, and as always the ride was fun and the company excellent. The question was whether I'd be able to move when I woke up Sunday morning.

To my surprise, Sunday wasn't bad...at least not until Shock #4.

I did a short walk/run jaunt around the neighborhood before going to swim practice, and my legs felt pretty good. Once I got in the pool, though, I realized just how much the unfamiliar weight machines, the run, and the bike ride had torn me up. My arms and shoulders were completely uncooperative, my legs felt like lead, and drowning seemed a distinct possibility. But as usually happens, I got looser as the practice went on...and eventually felt good enough to hold a decent pace on a set of 10 x 100s free on a 1:20 sendoff. I was feeling comfortable at that point, and on my way to a shock-free workout.

At that point, Mark (who had been the lane leader) got out, leaving me to finish the workout as the sole male in the pool. So when Lori suggested that we do 5 x 50s with 10 pushups in the middle of each one, I felt obligated (as the lone remaining representative of the brotherhood of manly men) to agree to the challenge.

Holy cow! That was HARD! My poor tired body was screaming for mercy—arms shaking, legs wobbly, and breathing ragged and raspy. But the gauntlet had been thrown, and there was no way I was going to give up on the pushups while a bunch of frail little girls cranked through them without complaint. I refuse to be outdone by a group of dainty, dress-wearing, Oprah watchers!

---Oh, OK. You got me. I just threw that last bit in there to see if you're paying attention. Anyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that I've been getting my butt kicked by girls throughout my entire life. I don't like it very much and I try to avoid it, but after having it happen so consistently over the years, I think I handle it with adequate dignity. And besides, while every single woman on my swim team is lovely, sweet, and very feminine, they are NOT frail by any stretch of the imagination. One of the things I love most about this group is that each and every one of them embraces challenge, and they attack their workouts with positive attitudes and enthusiasm. The women on the Foothills Masters Swim Team are truly kick-ass babes!

And they make me work. At the end of practice, I could barely move. I think that final pushup set made Shock #4 the biggest one of the weekend. If the axioms are true, then I should be getting a LOT stronger after this one. I'm guessing that I'll be creaky (and sleepy) all day Monday at the office, and will want to take a hot bath when I get home Monday night. But you know what? It feels good to know that I got in some effective training over the weekend. It may hurt a bit, but it feels good.

I hope your weekend also provided some opportunities to feel good. Let's hope the rest of the week does too. Have a great day, my friends!

Shopping Frenzy

One more thing to be thankful for in the future: No more BSODs!

I've been trying to edit videos for the last couple of days, and my computer keeps crashing. The Blue Screen of Death. Grr. I save my work frequently, so I haven't lost much...but it's still annoying.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is over, so now it begins: Christmas music on the radio, Rankin-Bass claymation/Grinch-a-thons on the telly, and crowds of patriotic Americans charging into the malls to do their part to end the recession. 'Tis the season to be jolly, to send letters to relatives you barely know, and to delight in the Santafication of the public arena. It's the happiest time of the year.

Well, unless you are an introvert. Some people get positively freaked out by the thought of visiting Best Buy or Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving. I happen to be one of them.

So, I stay at home. After all, most of the shopping I want to do can be done on eBay. Or by calling 800 numbers that I hear on TV. (I've been seriously considering a Yoshi Blade lately for some reason.)

But if I do decide to brave the crowds in the shopping malls in search of bargains, I think I'll take my camera along. Sure there will be blog-worthy events to chronicle. In the meantime, happy shopping, and have a great day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Despite their funny hats, lack of swimming pools, and misguided attempts to ban Kevin Bacon from dancing, the Pilgrims were A-OK -- they sure came up with a good idea when they thought up this Thanksgiving thing.

(Yeah, I know...we need to give credit to the Indians, too. If I'm remembering my history classes correctly, Geronimo and his lovely wife Sacajewea brought the cranberry sauce and the decorative multicolored squash for the centerpiece. But I'm pretty sure the idea of sitting at a table to stuff yourself stupid and then watching football was strictly a Euro-Pilgrim contribution. And whether it's politically correct or not, we all know which of those ideas has done more to shape American society, don't we?)

I shall leave it to other bloggers to describe the wonders of feasting upon large roasted birds and endless varieties of pie. And since I am thankful for pretty much the same things as everyone else is (health, family, friends, Led Zeppelin, etc), I won't bother going into detail about items that bring joy to my life on a daily basis. I will spend part of my Thanksgiving Day reflecting upon those joys, for sure...but I won't bore you with those reflections.

Instead, I thought I'd make a short list of things for which I expect to be grateful on future Thanksgivings. I'm not predicting when these things will materialize...I'm just saying I'm thankful in advance.

• I'm thankful that the "pants on the ground" fad died, and that kids have learned how to use that fabulous invention known as "the belt".


• And I'm not saying this has anything to do with the bullet point above, but I'm thankful that my son has found regular employment and no longer asks his parents to pay for anything.


• I'm thankful that people finally realized that U2 is a very mediocre band, and have demanded that Bono repay all the money people wasted on their albums...so the formerly misguided fans can go buy Blue Öyster Cult music instead.


• I'm thankful that Dominos added Spam and gummi worms as topping choices.


• I'm thankful that my boss apologized for all the years of undervaluing my talent, and has adjusted my salary accordingly.


• I'm thankful that they found somebody who could fill Leslie Nielsen's shoes, so that the Naked Gun franchise could continue. (But who'd have thought it would be Jar Jar Binks?)


• I'm thankful that implementing the death penalty for email spammers turned out to be such an effective deterrent.


• I'm especially thankful the upgrades to the traffic light system so I no longer have to sit at the lights for 5 minutes at 5am when there's not a single other car on the road. (Of course, this is the same technology that will eventually lead to Skynet and doomsday plagues of terminator robots, but for the moment, it's nice to not waste time when there's no traffic.)


• And, oh yeah...I'm thankful for World Peace.

I hope your 2010 Thanksgiving is everything you hoped it would be, and that your future Thanksgivings are even better. And I hope that the time between now and next Thanksgiving evokes moments of daily gratitude for bringing you a constant stream of pleasures and thrills. Have a great day!

Alcatraz

The world's most famous gangster was incarcerated at the world's most famous prison. Their names? Al Capone and Alcatraz (or if you prefer...Al Catraz). Coincidence? I don't think so.

Or maybe it is. After all, the island was named more than a century before the gangster was born, and as far as I know, no one refers to the island as "Al"...or even as "Scarface".

It was actually named by the first Spaniard to discover the island—Juan Manuel de Ayala—who in 1775 named the island "La Isla de los Alcatraces," which translates as "The Island of the Pelicans." (He later discovered that he should have named it after his wife, but that's another story. Although when you think about it, having an angry wife isn't all that different from being sentenced to jail, so maybe the whole thing works out after all.)

Anyway, the thought was that an island in the middle of the bay would be a good place to keep criminals, since there aren't that many machine-gun-toting bootleggers who also happen to be good swimmers, and the distance to shore would render them docile and cooperative. Didn't really work out that way—there were still a multitude of escape attempts. In fact, the prison was finally closed because it cost too darn much to run the place, what with all the guards and food and stuff they had to ship out there by ferry. So the bad guys were eventually relocated from San Francisco Bay to a prison in Flourissant, Colorado, which doesn't even have a moat.

I know a bunch of folks who have made the swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco. There is a triathlon there every year that starts with a swim from the island to the mainland. It's not a particularly tough swim for an experienced open-water athlete...but everyone knows that swimmers are the most righteous and upstanding of citizens, and role models for all of society—so comparing them to criminals is a silly thing to do, anyway. I can honestly say that I do not know a single swimmer who has been convicted of bootlegging.

Anyway, I had the chance to tour the island, and enjoyed it all very much. I won't bore you with additional history of the island, since you can look that up on other sites, but will share with you my personal observations. Here they are:

• The Park Service probably doesn't have to pay their employees all that much, since they get to wear those really cool ranger hats.



• Rather than raising taxes all the time, the government should just charge people to tour more creepy old prisons and stuff -- there were thousands of tourists there, and at $26 a head, that's like a million dollars or something. Think how much money you could make if you ran tours through a prison that wasn't all empty and broken down! Am I right?



• The audio tour (with individual headsets) is a great idea. But the trick is to push the "start" button when nobody else is ready to go. I started mine at the same time as 6 other people, so we were constantly moving at exactly the same time. They had some nice sound effects work, though, from riots to clanging doors, to plaintive dueling banjo backgrounds; it all added up to give the tour a rather haunting and creepy mood.



• One of the audio tour narrators (a former prisoner) said that the worst thing about being incarcerated there was being able to look across the bay and see the bright lights and bustle of downtown San Francisco. He said that he could almost hear the joy in partying voices along the waterfront on the mainland, and the desire to leave the sterile drudgery of life on "The Rock" provided plenty of incentive to go straight after serving his term. Living a lonely and solitary life while watching the activity in a great and exciting city across the bay must've been torment indeed. But I'm thinking that showering nekkid in a long trough with a bunch of remorseless criminals might be even worse than that.



• OR...it could be the decor.
  
  No, it's not the green that I object to. ...All right, it is, partly, but I could learn to live with that. After all, our family home's basement was painted that color when I was growing up, and while my exposure to that particular hue may have been responsible for my brief flirtation with becoming a hippie in the late 60s, I eventually turned out OK.
  
  No, my objection to the interior design of the Alcatraz prison cell lies more in the feng shui aesthetics. One should not have any part of one's bed less than three feet from the 'loo.
  
  And who cleans the place, anyway? Does a petite Nicaraguan woman politely knock on the bars each day and say "Housekeeping", before using her master key to enter? Or is there one community toilet brush and a container of Lysol cleanser that makes its way down the cell block once a week? I can imagine hearing: "C'mon, Capone, quit bogarting the blue goo!" And for that matter, wouldn't you want to schedule your, um, "business" at times when the guards weren't likely to be walking down the aisle? Talk about privacy issues! It's all pretty well designed to make you NOT want to live there, I guess.
  
  Anyway, the audio tour did not answer any of those delicate hygiene questions, so I cannot pass the info along to you. Sorry.

I did enjoy the tour. And other than the idea of gangster ghosts haunting the hallways, I thought the island had a certain rugged charm. I got some pretty decent exercise walking all over the place, and had fun listening to the other tourists commenting about which of their in-laws they'd like to see incarcerated, etc. The Park Service staff was surprisingly cheerful given the morbid surroundings, and the bay breezes added that special sealife scent that you just don't get as a tourist in Colorado. But there was one bizarre element...and I'm not talking about the "fake head in the bed" escape attempt. I'm talking about the fact that somebody thought it was a good idea to have a San Francisco theater troupe perform a live enactment of "Hamlet" right there on the island. "Shakespeare on the Rock", they called it, and sure enough, if you removed your prison-tour headphones, you could hear cries of "Alas, poor Yorick", and "There's the rub!" echoing among the corridors of Cell Block C. Geez.

I know my English teachers will roll over in their graves to hear this...but I'm simply not a big Shakespeare fan. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's a complete waste of time to read any literary works that pre-date Mark Twain. (And it's pretty much a vast wasteland between Twain and Asimov, too, for that matter.) So when I'm wandering around a prison complex imagining the lives of various organized crime kingpins, I really have no desire to hear a bunch of self-impressed thespians shouting of the appeal of nunneries and the stench of Denmark. And if roving gangs of costumed actors weren't enough, they were accompanied by a small brass band that screeched so badly it made the island's rabbits jump into the water and swim for the mainland. And where is it written that outdoor Shakespeare must be performed with accents normally reserved only for Renaissance Fairs? Ugh.

Oh well. The good news is that I eventually made my own escape from the island relaxing on a pleasant ferryboat ride, and then had a wonderful time back on the shores of San Francisco. I would highly recommend the trip, and may share some more thoughts about my experiences in the Bay Area in the future. For now, I'll just leave you with a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge from the top of Coit Tower, and my sincere hopes that your only experiences with jail cells will be on a guided tour like mine.

Have a great day!

Cable Cars

I start each day with ideas of epic bloggery, my brain teeming with ideas that span the entire arc of human existence and into uncharted metaphysical realms. Words that beg to be released bubble within my cerebrum, bouncing around in a Brownian motion of Riverdance-level intensity. Each of these unborn topics has the potential to elicit epiphanies, inspire spirited discourse among readers, and possibly change the course of human history. In my mind, these epic unwritten blogs are destined to be the future gems of the literary world -- the "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" of the atomic age.

But alas, my friends, such a destiny appears to have little chance of being fulfilled. By the time I actually motivate myself to sit at the computer and type, the pressures of daily life exert themselves, and I find myself with too few available minutes to allow for the full manifestation of these epic concepts. And so, one of two things must happen -- either I post nothing, waiting in vain for an uninterrupted multi-hour timespan in which to fully flesh out those Bard-dethroning ideas...or I write a few paragraphs of half-baked claptrap that can be spewed forth without any great mental effort or time expenditure. For the last few weeks, I've been in the former mode; knowing that my tales of high adventure on the west coast deserve the full-monty literary treatment, I have waited for the opportunity to sit uninterrupted long enough to share the details in a form that would do the adventure justice. Oh, it was epic, all right -- nearly hobbit-esque in its scope! The saga would include tales of vast underground caverns filled with mysterious rumblings, descriptions of daring escapes from hostile islands, accounts of death-march footsteps across precipitous slopes through conditions from cold drizzle to searing heat, possible hallucinations, and a personal account of witnessing the cruelty of Nature as her creatures struggle mightily in a Darwinian fight for sustenance.

And yes, there were more mimes, too. Oh, the humanity!

So you simply must understand that the lack of Keeping Pace blogulence in the recent weeks has been out of my love for literature and the associated quest for the highest quality in tale-telling, and has nothing whatsoever to do with laziness, addiction to Star Trek reruns on the Retro Channel, or eating so many peanut butter cookies that my greasy fingers are unable to manipulate the keyboard. No...It's all about the art.

So...since no epics seem to be forthcoming, let's see if we can't spew out a few pages of hack writing, just so I'll have some surrounding text within which to insert my photos from the trip. OK?

(In case you're curious, the "death march" I mentioned was a long walk I took to wander through San Francisco's Chinatown, which has some really steep hills. And the bit about Nature's struggles was regarding pigeons and seagulls duking it out for french fries along the piers. You'll have to use your imagination to flesh out those stories. Sorry.)

Vast Underground Caverns

I was raised in Kansas. We had no oceans, ate no fish (other than Mrs. Pauls'), and saw no boats larger than a suburban driveway. We also had diesel-fueled buses for public transportation, and had only seen cable cars on Rice-a-Roni commercials. And since Rice-a-Roni seemed like some sort of mutant commie unnatural mix of Things Which Do Not Belong Together, I didn't pay much attention to those commercials, either. So in my mind, the famous San Francisco "cable cars" were these old-timey, train-ish kinds of things that made a lot of clanging noises and went down steep hills in the middle of the street.

I had never spent a second thinking about their source of motive power. If asked, I would've guessed that they were powered by electric motors fed from overhead wires...and that those wires (being all wire-like and stuff) were called "cables". And after an informal survey, I think it's safe to say that I'm not the only non-Californian who would think that way. Therefore, I'm writing this blog as not only a travelogue, but also to provide education to millions of former Kansans and midwesterners. (Not Oklahomans, though -- they tend to resist education.)

So here's the news flash, people -- Cable cars are actually pulled by cables. That's right...they have no motors at all; they just get dragged up and down the streets by a system of moving underground cables on pulleys. Think of it as a subterranean ski lift, only instead of a chair hanging from the wire, there's a train car with a "grabber" that reaches beneath the street to hold tight for its free ride.

There is actually a slot in the middle of the street. Beneath this slot, the cables are in constant motion while the system is in operation. The cable car extends its grabber (think: ViseGrips^® on a stick) into the slot, finds the cable, and latches on for the ride. The cable car operator controls how tightly the grabber grips, so he can vary the speed of the car from a dead stop (no grip at all) to the top cable speed of 9.5 mph (kung fu grip). Again, you might think of it the way a ski lift chair can be slowed down as it swings around to pick up a passenger vs. its full-tilt speed when locked on to charge up the hill.

The entire system is powered from one central location, where massive electric motors spin the wheels that pull the cables. The cables fan out from this central facility and run beneath each street that features a cable car route. Giant underground pulleys direct the cables around corners and up and down the hills. It's quite marvelous to think that there's an entire world of hidden machinery lurking beneath the streets, and that somebody actually came up with the idea to do this.

"Hey Chauncey."

"What's that, Edgar."

"I got me an idear. Let's dig us a bunch o' trenches, mount some pulleys, and run cables underneath the city so we can pull funny-lookin' little train cars without have to use horses anymore."

"Sounds like the bee's knees, Edgar. Let's do it!"

Um, that is not a direct quote, but there is an extensive history of the project at the Cable Car Museum, which happens to be in the same building that houses the motors and wire-splicing equipment, etc. Here it is:


They really did design the system for the express purpose of replacing the horses that used to drag the carts around. At first glance, having a few Clydesdales pulling hayrack rides around the city may seem to be the Occam's Razor solution for the public transportation problem...but according to the museum, the steep hills and high cost of oats (not to mention the, um, ecological difficulties encountered when said oats are, um, disposed of) combined to make it more economical to use electric motors in place of the ol' gray mare. Sure, there's the difficulty in digging up the streets and planting all this hardware underground...and there's the challenges of oiling the pulleys, fixing frayed cables, and designing the kung fu grip mechanism. But apparently, the bean counters were still able to justify the infrastructure investment. And so it was built.

Of course, with the relentless advance of technology, it eventually became cheaper to put small motors in each train and power them via overhead electric lines. These vehicles, chugging around town without the benefit of an underground tow rope, are known as trolleys, streetcars, and (nowadays) light rail. But though they may be more efficient, they don't have the nostalgic charm or comforting underground rumble of the old cable cars; so San Francisco decided to keep the archaic system around for historical ambiance and tourist revenue. Indeed, while I was there, it seemed that every passing cable car was chock-a-block with camera-wielding out-of-towners, their faces plastered with smiles as wide as the bay.

I wonder how many of them were craving Rice-a-Roni?

So, with that I shall sign off, with a promise of at least one more short piece about my experiences in the San Francisco area. Alcatraz!

In the meantime, keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, and have a great day!