Barefoot

After enjoying my run on Sunday, I was hoping to feel really peppy and loose at track practice Tuesday night. Alas, the "sitting at a desk all day" thing continues to take its toll. I worked hard, but the awesome speed I was expecting to magically appear remained absent. The thing that made me really feel bad was that there was a young lady at the track who was running her mile repeats at a pace that was 30 seconds per 400 faster than my all-out sprints.

It's a good thing I can call myself a swimmer. If my personal identity depended on my running to define me, I'd be a sad, sad man.

As it is, though, I'm having tons of fun. Oh sure, I complain about having to spend the day at the office when I'd rather be out climbing mountains and taking pictures of bigfoot, etc. But if being a slow runner is the worst problem I have in my life, well, I'm not doing too darn bad, am I?

Still, I continue to work on the hamstring issue. After running our stack of 400-100-100 repeats, I took my shoes off and ran some on the football field. It felt good to feel the grass between my toes, and Pat observed that my hamstring hiccup motion was less obvious in barefoot mode. I'm thinking this will become a new part of my routine...at least until the grass gets all brown and prickly.

Anyway, I finally realized that I forgot to ever explain how this guy relates to John Carter. The actor's name is Kenneth Mars (get it?), shown here in his role as Inspector Kemp in "Young Frankenstein". You may also know Mr. Mars as the author of "Springtime for Hitler", or perhaps as the amazingly annoying Hugh in "What's Up, Doc?". I'm not sure if being named after a planet was an influence in choosing comedy as a career, but if it worked for Mickey Mouse's dog, well...why not?

As for yesterday's food quiz, it was apparently WAY too easy.



"Catwoman" is 2nd place on the list of all-time crappy superhero movies, right behind "Daredevil". But Halle Berry looked great, so the movie's memories will live on in Halloween costume form. Anyway, our "Halle-peño" was the most popular of our celebrity foods.

Some of the younger folks did not recognize the "Lou Brock-oli", though, which makes me sad. Brock was the absolute master of the basepaths, and held the stolen base record for a long time. He was one of those guys that made baseball exciting regardless of the score.

Lauren Bacall-iflower was apparently easy, same as it is to recall her most famous quote: "When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise." I'm not sure what prompted her to say that, but hey...when you're right, you're right.

I purposely chose an younger photo of Keye Luke for our "Keye-wi" graphic. Some readers may have recognized him from his role as "numba one son" from the Charlie Chan movies. But folks of my generation remember him either as the blind Shaolin philosopher from the Kung Fu TV series, or as the somewhat inept prison colony governor from the "Lord Garth" episode of Star Trek. (If I'm not mistaken, that's also the episode that caused the "agon" to become standardized as the universal unit for measuring the intensity of pain.)

The final panel is an "Eric Bana-na", which is probably a poisonous fruit. Eric Bana is most notable for redeeming his career after ruining the first Hulk movie by playing a pretty decent bad guy in the recent rebirth of the Star Trek franchise. (Well, OK, I have to be fair here -- Nick Nolte deserves equal credit for the abominable suckage of "Hulk". Ruining something that has the combined appeal of both Jennifer Connelly and Sam Elliot definitely requires a team effort.)

Anyway, I thought I'd continue with the same theme in our next puzzle, but hope to have added a modest degree of difficulty. I dunno, though -- this might be just about as easy as the other one. In any case, I hope you enjoy it. (Click to enlarge.)



As always, though, there's more than just trivia involved here. I am hoping that these images will also encourage you (and me) to eat healthy and nutritious foods, and thereby fully support our efforts to perform well in whatever sports we attempt. I wish the best of luck to you with fueling both your mind and your body.

Have a great day!