this world is only gonna break your heart

I have crammed this week to bursting, and we just passed the halfway point.

On Monday I took the train to work for the first time in a while. I enjoyed the chance to skim the morning’s news on an inky copy of the Boston Metro, and I got some reading done on the bus ride from Central to the office. I took the office’s complementary shuttle back to Cambridge for the train ride home. It says something of urban priorities that what might sound like a slur in certain parts of the country - “he takes the bus to work, man” - sounds like a bonus here.

I also auditioned for ImprovBoston’s next round of casting. Ten other guys and I filed into IB’s spacious new theater, warmed up briefly, then did ten minutes straight of freeform improv scenes. I feel reasonably confident in what I did - I forced myself off the back wall, made offers, heightened offers, responded well to others’ input. With the virtue of hindsight I can say this wasn’t enough, since the director said we’d hear back by Wednesday evening at the latest, but I’m glad I got myself out there.

I took some time off from jiu-jitsu in order to pack and move, so returning on Tuesday felt phenomenal. I had been looking for excuses to punch, throw or grab something for a week at least. Working out in a converted warehouse in a 10-pound cotton gi when it’s 90 degrees out left me swimming in sweat but otherwise healthy.

Melissa and Fraley invited me to their ice cave to watch the Celtics, so I changed into a clean shirt and drove straight there. Despite the Celtics’ sloppy play I had a hell of a time. RJ already documented some of the best exchanges; I’ll merely include one:

(during iPod commercial)
Melissa: Ugh. Coldplay.
Me: You have a problem with the non-threatening U2?
Fraley: How do you get less threatening than U2?
RJ: You could be Keaneand be a non-threatening Coldplay.

Wednesday saw me reviving two more dormant traditions - the gym and writing. I probably undid all the efforts of the former by gorging on ice cream and brownies during a sales meeting (hey, they know how to guarantee my attendance), but the latter felt productive. Then I hit up karaoke, singing “This Is How We Do It” at birthday girl Sylvia’s request. Hitting that titular declaration in full voice, right off the 4-count lead in, really cements the song’s success. Pull it off and soar; fumble it and crash.

And I’ve already got busy nights lined up tonight and tomorrow as well. The Fortress of Solitude hasn’t hindered my style (yet).

hurricanes and faster things

o Good news, everyone: I found the filthiest toilet in Boston.¹ It’s the men’s room in the Borders at Downtown Crossing. The first time I used it, several years ago, I remember I needed a token to open the door but nothing else about the experience. The second time I used it, this past Sunday: disaster!

Picture the worst train station bathroom you’ve ever entered, but with a lone Robert Doisneau print on the wall. A floor awash in urine. Two stalls, one of which won’t stay closed and the other of which o’erflows with solid fecal waste. The soap dispenser hangs on the wall above the trash can, rather than within arm’s reach of the sink, thus guaranteeing fewer people will find or use it.

Can I blame the entirety of its disgusting decline on no longer requiring a token for entry? Yes. Yes, I can.

o I have nothing but good things to say about the lunchtime bartender at the Grafton St Pub in Harvard Square. He not only has an Irish accent, but he’s everything you’d expect of a proper European bartender. Picture that guy in the Stella Artois commercial, trying to pour a beer in a train car and failing, but without the snooty attitude.

o Sometimes when I get out of jiu-jitsu, I notice that the music on the stereo seems about a quarter-step slower. I never notice it at any other time. Still flushed from exercise, I attribute it to the cocktail of adrenaline and oxygenated blood. I’ve worked out so hard that I’ve stepped outside of time. I have a mutant power.

On Tuesday night, driving home from jiu-jitsu, I decided to at least offer a sop to the scientific method and turn on the radio to see if other music sounded slower. It did not.

o I’d fret publicly over how much I still needed to pack, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything. I really ought to be fretting over how many boxes I need to buy.

o My school’s five-year reunion falls this weekend and I don’t know if I’m going. I already have plans on Saturday, so I’ll show up to the Saturday event late if at all. And I’d gladly forego the Friday party if someone had a better offer. Many of my better friends from school can’t make it, many of the rest fall either a year ahead of or behind me, and the few that will be there I see every week anyway.

As I’ve said before: BC was big enough to have subcultures, and for that I’m grateful. Smaller schools tend to drown students in the overwhelming social circle of the same hundred people. But I got to hang with the theater kids. Specifically, the improv kids. Specifically, the improv murder mystery kids. You can’t drill down to that level at St. John’s, let me tell you.

_______________________
¹ If you have a website, weblog, LiveJournal or Facebook page, please post the above link, using the text “filthiest toilet in Boston.” I’d like to revive the dormant tradition of Googlebombing as a public service. The people must be warned!

every little piece of your life will mean something to someone

# Waiting in line for a scrip at the Target Pharmacy, I glanced down the aisle and saw a sign for Insolence Aids. Useful little niche, I thought. Use Dr. Fulghum’s Patented Mollifying Tonic for Ages 3 to 13. Same great formula for over one hundred years. Guaranteed to cut back-sass, pouting and tantrums by fifty percent. Then I realized I’d conflated the words Incontinence Aids and Insoles in a hasty skimming, a mistake I can’t be the first to have made.

# I went to a co-worker’s party in Brighton on Friday night. Folks I never saw played Beirut (which I always clarify as “beer pong,” because I don’t know that everyone uses that name) in the kitchen, while I sat in on several heated discussions to the rules of Asshole in the living room. We watched the Celtics lose Game 6 (”you’ve got to go for the percentage shots,” I kept yelling at the TV). I danced to an amateur DJ’s relatively small 90s crate and smoked a clove cigarette outside. Good times.

# I have a variety of exciting new bruises on my forearms from jiu-jitsu on Saturday. One’s about the size of a White Castle slider; the second, maybe a silver dollar. Another student got nicked in the temple with the point of a wooden knife. It bled worse than it turned out to be but, if the divot below my right index knuckle indicates anything, he’ll have an exciting new scar in about a week. Look out, ladies!

# I attended a Kentucky Derby party on Saturday! I don’t know if I made myself a mint julep, but I combined bourbon, ice, seltzer, syrup and mint leaves in a combination I found tasty. Gentlemen lounged around in suits and ascots; ladies preened and cooed under floppy sun hats. I missed the entirety of the actual race due to the smallness of the living room, but had an excellent time regardless. I hope to see everyone involved again some time soon.

# Allow me to confess some petty larcenies. FIRST: while driving through a McDonald’s on Saturday morning, I arrived at the first pay window with a dollar held out expectantly. The lady inside didn’t even glance my way in the thirty seconds I idled, fussing with an umbrella. Presuming I’d picked the wrong window - sometimes the drive-through uses one window, sometimes two - I motored up to the next one, where a young man thrust a cheeseburger on me. So I got a McDonald’s double cheeseburger without paying. SECOND: I trust the laundromat on my corner enough to leave stuff in the washer or dryer without sitting in front of it. You can always see a staff member hovering inside while the ‘mat has its doors open. On my third and final trip to the ‘mat on Sunday, the shy Asian lady behind the counter shuffled up and pressed a crumpled dollar bill on me, nodding and smiling. I looked at her in confusion until another customer translated: “you left it in the machine.” “Thank you,” I said, unsure how to explain to someone who apparently spoke no English that I hadn’t laundered anything that day other than bedding. So I’m up $2 on the weekend.

# I somehow took the exact same Red Line train car to and from Park Street on Sunday night, four hours apart. How do I know? The train compartment smelled vaguely of shit; it got so I didn’t mind it. That’s the worst thing that I can confess.

# “Does the bet still pay off if they shoot the horse?”
“Yes, it does.”
“The system works!”

# Finally, congratulations to ImprovBoston for holding a fantastic date auction at Venu on Sunday night. IB raised, if Sasha’s math can be trusted, just over $6000 from the auctions and raffles alone. Special congratulations to Serpico and Christine, friends and regulars both, for their fund-raising efforts. The whole night really felt like a grown-up prom, with classy folks parading on stage for the crowd’s approval and a late night dance party in formal wear. I had to practically tear myself away at 11:30 but could have stayed later.

shaolin shadowboxing and the wu-tang sword style

I give you an entire post about jiu-jitsu:

# For as much work as I do on grappling, throwing and joint locks, I definitely need to drill old-fashioned stand up boxing. Tuesday night’s class proved that, even if a decent boxer only landed one jab in four on me, he could drive me across a room thanks to my piss-poor defense. I need to work parrying, shuffling or fading without moving backward. I can’t think of a better way to do this other than to get someone I trust, stand them exactly two feet away from me, verify that they can touch but not pound my skull with a jab at full extension, and say, “Just go until I say stop.”

# One of the students in our Tuesday night class got in a fight over the weekend. I won’t go into details (per the student, “an investigation is pending”), but the circumstances reminded me of how much the classroom environment differs from a real street fight. I hope that I’d acquit myself well. I know that when the adrenaline’s pumping I react aggressively, not passively, and I know that I can take a hit and keep moving. Because of those two factors - not because of any fancy techniques - I trust I’d do okay. But I want more than trust.

# I still have rugburn on the back of my wrists this morning. Now before you go making any snide comments, I got it from a grappling drill on the rug-covered mats at our school. So I got rugburn from a two-hundred and fifty pound man mounting me and pinning my hands to the ground. There. Try and find something lewd in that; I dare you.

# Finally got my hand X-rayed yesterday, since the jammed finger I got on March 12th has still been bothering me on occasion. The diagnosis: broken! “I had to zoom it 8x,” the doctor said, pointing at my X-ray. “See this tiny line here?” Apparently the ligament around one of my joints has a bit of a crack, and the capsule that protects those ligaments has swelled as a result. I still have full range of motion, but it could take six months for the swelling to entirely disappear. “I get more martial artists coming in here six weeks after their injury,” the doctor said.

well, I’ve got friends in low places

Joe (a/k/a Big Daddy Hookup) had some extra pavilion seats for the Sox’ first game of the season against the Yankees. I quickly pounced on two of them. Wanting to share the tickets with the person who’d most appreciate them, I immediately thought of Victoria (a/k/a Tessie) and called her up.

How fun can a baseball game be with driving rain, sub-40 temperatures and a Sox loss? A hell of a good time, I say. Amanda (a/k/a Sarah Connor, Attorney at Law) and Joe recounted their trip to Tokyo to see the Sox play. Apparently the legendarily disciplined Japanese cheering section has now been introduced to the phrase “Yankees Suck.” That kind of gunboat diplomacy I can get behind.

And, of course, pavilion seats afford you a nice, unobstructed view of the players you’re yelling at.

“That’s some Gold Glove fielding right there, A-Rod,” I yelled, off his early game error that left a runner on first. Later, after a neatly fielded double play: “You’re still not very good!“

Giambi, starting the season with a masterful .050 average, homered one off the recovering Timlin. “Nice work, juicer,” I yelled. “Almost at .100! You’ll get there!“

I dragged myself out of bed on Saturday into 60-degree temps and went to advanced instructor training for jiu-jitsu. Good news: my judo keeps getting better. Better news: the current crop of newly certifying instructors, including Katie (a/k/a the Redheaded Brown Belt), keep getting much better. They already have poise, confidence, engagement with the audience and good technique. Keep at it, trainees.

I finally saw Will (a/k/a Sketchy Bear) and DJ’s (a/k/a Gimli son of Gloin) place in Dorchester, a cozy little walk-up with some real class to it. I helped Serpico, Meghan, Will and Auston stat up characters for a forthcoming Mutants and Masterminds game. Boston can sleep soundly, knowing that Deluge, Rumble, the One-Man Battalion and an as-yet-unnamed ghost monk watch their streets. Afterwards, Will and I played Pain on the PS/3, which combines ragdoll physics models, crunching sound effects and cartoonish graphics for a perversely fun game.

Today’s theme: nicknames.

’cause Saturday night’s all right for fightin’; get a little action in

But it wouldn’t be a martial arts demo without board breaks, would it?

end of work week, chillin’ on a saturday

I sat down and crunched some numbers last night and I’m pretty sure this past weekend was a good one on net.

Check for yourself:

+: I spent Friday evening in, watching Breach instead of heading to 90s’ Night. Sparkgrrl suggests that this was the wiser course, as apparently Allston has been invaded by drunken college kids. I’m as shocked as you.

-: The Saturday jiu-jitsu workout felt marginal. I had a hard time focusing for the first hour - couldn’t remember obvious stuff, couldn’t commit to what was in front of me. I knocked over one of the fancy blown glass soap dispensers in Paul’s bathroom, scattering a fist-sized blob of soap and several shards of glass across the tile floor. It actually took a sharp blow to the head - from someone’s knee - to wake me up.

-: On top of that, every time I make progress on one set of techniques I lose ground on another. I found myself struggling with stuff that I blew people away with three weeks ago (arm bars off of multiple attackers), though I had surprising luck with a usual trouble spot (irimi nage off of multiple attackers). And I haven’t even reached the stuff that I know I’m going to have trouble with - the black belt techniques. I’d lump this in under the point above but it’s a broad frustration, not a particular incident.

-: And I still can’t do judo.

+: I caught up with Vickie and heard about her weekend. We talked about her review gigs, our first concerts and the Red Sox whipping up on BC. Ask her how much she loves Ashlee Simpson, because you will be hard-pressed to find a bigger fan in Boston.

+: The Neutrino writing team for the ITV submission had a remarkably productive meeting on Saturday night. I think we were all amazed at how much we cranked out in 2 hours. We’ve got some compelling and interesting characters who all have real reasons to be doing what they’re doing - namely, typical sitcom hijinks. We also established that the opposite of “womanizer” is “man-eater,” and that nothing’s funnier than a waiter dropping a tray of glasses. Nothing.

+: After sitting untouched for weeks, two of the books on my Amazon storefront sold within 36 hours of each other. I have no idea how Amazon makes money off this. They gave me $8 for shipping the two books, and even buying those cushioned MediaMailer envelopes at the Post Office I only spent $7 on Standard shipping. Hello, pocket change!

-: I felt pretty tired on Saturday and Sunday. I pulled something in my lats on Friday after working them out really hard and then reclining funny on the bed later that evening.

-: Also, it snowed again. Could someone just dump three feet of snow on Boston and then stop for the year, rather than three to five inches every six days?

+: I went grocery shopping on Sunday. I now have a variety of healthy snacks at my desk at work: Honey Nut Cheerios, Craisins, etc.

So the + and - seem pretty even. But I inflated my jiu-jitsu anxiety out into three separate entries where two might have sufficed. So I think, on net, that the weekend turned out productive.