If At First You Don't Succeed, Maybe Failure Is More Your Style

Track and Field events are a big snooze for me.  The folks at NBC pay over a billion dollars to broadcast the summer Olympics every four years, and try to get me excited about these finely-tuned machines, running fast in straight lines and occasionally jumping over things.  And every four years I respond with a deep, heartfelt yawn.    

Call me when you have to run down your dinner from behind

Once in a while, a video surfaces that brings a little more excitement to TnF and gets me to watch.  These types of videos usually involve less-finely tuned machines struggling to accomplish the same fetes as their Olympic superiors.  These are the true amateurs, the ones that train by playing Wii Track n' Field.

If running fast in a straight line is the upper limit of your athletic ability, let's throw in some obstacles to make things interesting.  We'll call them 'hurdles.'  Give it a try.  We'll tape it.  That way you can see what you did wrong and improve, and the internet can have some fun watching you fail.

I've been sitting on this video for a while, partly because it's kinda dickish to be laughing at these girls' struggles.  I'm sure many of you have already seen it.  For those who haven't, enjoy:

But failure is often funnier in slow motion.  With a soundtrack.  The soundtrack to this one is Radiohead's Creep, so there are a few naughty words. But it's sung by a choir, so it's beautiful, right?  Just try to tell me this isn't a thing of beauty:

I guess there's two sides to this coin.  It's kind of sweet to see her getting up every time she tanks it.  Sure, it can be used as a "never give up" motivational thing.  That doesn't mean it's not funny.  This was like a hybrid of track and baseball.  Someone should have told these two girls that you don't have to slide into the base after every hurdle.  

Maybe the IOC could consider making Baseball Track into an Olympic sport. (Heck, they let ribbon gymnastics in!)  Then I might watch.  But once you add the competitive factor and the coaches and the PEDs, it sorta loses its charm.  There's something more appealing, something special, about the unintentional stumbling and sliding of true amateurs.      

The One About Flamethrowers and Career Suicide

You ever see one of those loose threads hanging from the tapestry of one of your cherished childhood memories?  The image woven so beautifully in time, but you see that thread and you just can't resist giving it a tug, only to have the whole thing unravel before your eyes?  I've done this so many times, I should know better than to go fooling with the things I loved when I was a kid, because it will ruin them.  Rarely are things as good as you remember.  More often, they're total crap.

Condor Man.  Duck Hunt.  Pitfall.  Cloak and Dagger.  Any Schwarzenegger movie not directed by Jim Cameron.

So just leave 'em alone, right?  Leave them to their remembered beauty.

Tonight was Thunderbird's Global Gala.  This is the party that the school throws for each graduating class, and it is generally a can't miss event.  I didn't leave the dance floor for three hours straight.  On the ride home, all danced out and feeling mellow, I was sitting on the bus next to an Indian classmate of mine who is a huge classic rock fan.  We were discussing great wind-down music for the end of an awesome evening when Billy Squier's "Lonely is the Night" came on the radio.  Billy Squier was huge back in the early 80's, with three albums going platinum from '81-'84.  Thanks in large part to my older brother Slut Rock, I had grown up listening to Squier.  My Indian friend had never heard of him.  So I promised to send him some YouTube links to educate him.  In trolling for songs to send, I stumbled upon what may be the single worst video of all time:  Rock Me Tonight.

It was Squier's most popular single ever based on the pop charts.  Yet some credit the release of the song's video version with the cratering of his career.  As I watched in gape-mouthed horror, I had little doubt they were right.  If Freddy Mercury, Elton John, and George Michael were to write a song and direct the video, they couldn't have conceived of a gayer vision than this.  Which is fine, if your name is Freddy Mercury, Elton John, or George Michael.  This is your milieu.  But Billy was/is a purely hetero rock and roller.  He's married to a German soccer player, for crying out loud.  You'd never guess it from the way this video plays out.

[Fade in to a shirtless Billy lying on a bed, wrapped in satin sheets.  He stands up and pulls on his lace-up jeans and ties the laces.  Slips into Jennifer Beal's ripped t-shirt from Flashdance.  Begins limp-wristed snapping, then skips stage-left to dance in front of the mirror.  Falls to the floor and army crawls back stage-right, but sexy-like.  Gets up, sugar-foots his way around the room, and rips his blouse (slo-mo.)]

Just as you think the ripped shirt will bring some machismo back to his rock persona, he grabs a pink tank top and continues his sugar-footing.  Then, as you feel the hope of rescue slipping out of sight, Billy spies his guitar, and goes off the shred with his friends, and you think they'll save him from this awful video.  But those are foolish thoughts.  Nothing can save this video.  Come to think of it, this is sort of like the gay version of Thriller, when Michael Jackson and his girlfriend are surrounded by the zombies and she clings tight to him for protection, and you think she's safe.  But when she turns around she sees that Michael is a zombie, too.

You think, "Yeah, Billy escaped the satin sheets and dancing mirror!  Now his friends will take him safely back to Rocklandia."  But then surprise!  They're in on it.  And what was a Richard Simmons clip morphs into a full-fledged Wham! video.  The only way it could have been gayer is if Billy had spontaneously combusted in an explosion of glitter at the end.

Watch the whole thing if you can.  I had to look away by about the three-minute mark.  I'm not the type to stand around roasting marshmallows on the smoldering coals of my memories.  I'll be sure to keep my Squier intake in audio form from now on.            

To Live And Die In LA

The rugby team went to LA this past weekend to play UCLA's MBA team.  Rugby teams are a special bunch of guys, and you have to leave your pearls at home, lest you wear them out from constant clutching.  Drunken, stupid behavior is the norm, and is only exacerbated by road trips.  We rented two 12-person vans to make the 6-hour drive.

Six hours is what it takes a normal group.  But a group that starts drinking in the parking lot before you leave Phoenix takes significantly longer.  The first half of the drive was a lot of fun.  Drunkasaurus Rex regaled us with non-stop stories of his travels with the Navy, and we had some good fun reminiscing on how Bilbo T. Baggins came by his nickname.  But fellas that ben drinkin' need frequent bathroom stops.  The first stop, I thought "Really?  Already?"  The second stop brought some humor as The Ambassador occupied a urinal, only to be shouldered aside mid-stream by a Drunkasaurus itching for a sword fight (I've withheld the picture to protect the guilty, but Drunkasaurus won).  By the third, fourth, and fifth bathroom stops, the level of inebriation rose in inverse proportion to my drop in humor.  The last hour was filled with The Ambassador, Mayhem and His Supreme Uteness arguing about the pureness of Greek and Georgian bloodlines and anything having to do with WWII.  Mayhem spent a good half hour trying to convince me of the imperative nature of a strip club visit once we got to town.  I politely informed him that paying one tuition bill is enough for me.  We made it to LA in eight hours.

UCLA sent two of their fattest, dumbest, drunkest players to greet us at the hotel and take us out to a bar.  When we arrived at the bar, there were only two other UCLA players waiting.  I figured they had sent a token delegation of guys to make sure we were in the worst possible playing shape for the game the next day.  Our guys admirably recognized the strategy and decided to turn in early rather than accompany Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to the strip club.  Except for Mayhem's jihad on trash cans on the walk home, I was so proud of our lushes that night. 

The game on Saturday was rough.  We barely had enough players to field a full team, and none of our guys had size.  Our biggest player probably weighed 215-220, and many of our players had never played the position we were asking them to play that day.  Because of this, we decided to play two games with 20-minute halves rather than the usual one game of 40-minute halves.  We basically played the first game to a draw.  The actual score was Thunderbird 5, UCLA 7.  We missed the after kick, but they didn't have real goal posts, so I don't count that.

The second game, their size wore us down.  We just couldn't keep putting the punishing hits on them that we were in the first game, and they had plenty of players to keep fresh legs in the game.  We lost the second game 14-7.  But they didn't score their two tries until the last 20 minutes when we were exhausted.

I spent much more time tackling big bruisers than I should have, and am feeling the effects of it still.  My shoulders are creaky, I've got abrasions all over, my back/neck are stiff.  It really is interesting to walk behind a rugby team after a game.  Gonzo calls it the Robocop walk.  You pivot stiffly on your feet, taking care to avoid any rotation of the trunk.  You don't just turn your head when someone calls you; you turn your whole frame to look at them.  This game brought an extra special treat for me:  a knee to the head, with an accompanying knot.  Oddly, the bump has mostly dissipated, but I still can't feel my scalp on the left side when I scratch my head.  I may have damaged a cutaneous nerve.  Hopefully the feeling will return over the next month or so.

Rugby is very social.  After every game (at least at the level we play at), there is a social where both teams get together to share meat and mead, and to sing filthy songs together.  The UCLA boys put on a good show at a decent bar in Santa Monica, and we all had a good time mingling and watching the UFC fight on Saturday night.  Mercifully, we were spared the filthy songs.

The ride home on Sunday was decidedly more subdued.  It is always so nice to be home.  To sleep in your own bed.  To take a cap full of Nyquil and drift off into the abyss and not think about how much it hurts to roll over.  It's not Thanksgiving yet, but I'd still like to express how thankful I am for Nyquil and ibuprofen.  It has gotten me through the last couple nights.

It's Cheaper Than Adoption

I've been in a Marketing Communications-induced funk this semester.  B-school requires a lot of group projects, ostensibly to build your skills in working in teams. But I'm convinced it's also because most professors are kinda lazy about grading and would rather read 10 papers instead of 70.  For my MarComm class, we have four team papers/presentations to prepare over a six week period (and for the record, the professor in this class is one of the most engaged, un-lazy professors I've ever had at any school). 

For this class, the six-person team had to include at least three different nationalities.  Once the course page opens up online and the class list is available, there is usually a mad flurry of emails with people trying to lock down team members that they want to work with.  I was late putting a team together, so I wound up in a team with one other American, one Taiwanese girl, and three Indian guys.  I knew them all.  Had never worked with them, but I knew they're all good folks.  I figured I had lucked out to get good teammates, having waited so long to get my team set.

The class went well until we got around to actually writing the papers. Then life devolved into a Bollywood B-school horror film.  Repeating (multiple times) paper outlines and directions for conducting research, all-night re-writes, completely re-doing teammates' power point slides a half hour before deadline, the villainous American (me) cracking the whip,  and 20-minute dance sequences in which my brain gets eaten at the end (hallucinated).

Somehow, miraculously, I managed to pull out a decent grade.  But I was sick in the head.  I was grinding my teeth more than usual, and even now I can't seem to get my energy levels back up.  I'm training for a half marathon in December, and any distance over four miles is absolutely exhausting.  What's the prescription?  More cowbell? 

Eh.  Even that's not helping at this point.  Yet there's a bit of truth in there somewhere.  They say that laughter is the best medicine.  So I've been on the hunt for things to make me laugh lately.  I laughed to tears on this video.  A fact that makes one thing clear:  my sense of humor is on drugs.  But I don't care, 'cause I'm a guy on a buffalo.

The Hispanic Pirhana Prom Had One. Jew. Person.

Maybe B-school has just totally destroyed my sense of humor, but I found these videos way too funny not to share it with my Dogs of War.

I'm bored by famine.  I cannot wait for a medieval cookie, a cinnabon, hot yellow kool-aid, and save a pretzel for the gas jets.  Thank you.  I wrote that. 



How about Bachman?

That hobo kept screaming, "Save a boar.  I wanna see it.  Do your raps.  C'mon.  Do it silly lady.  Do that whole fiesta food dance."

Yup.  I'd say I have some rehab to do with my humorz.  At least I got to laugh again.

Smokin' Some Cougar Bluegrass, Feelin' Good

BYU quarterbacks.  They're not from this planet.  They have such insulated, blind egos, which is not abnormal for any quarterback.  But at BYU, when they stand in as representatives of the team with their comments, they sometimes make their teammates look ridiculous, as Max Hall did after the Utah game two years ago.  This year, the difference from Hall's meltdown is that rather than winning a game in overtime prior to laying waste to the press room, this year the Cougars lost.  Perhaps coach Mendenhall needs to limit their exposure to the media after games, because once again, that's where the quarterback mystified the masses with his comments.  This time, the quarterback was Jake Heaps, and he likes his rose-colored glasses just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Jake Heaps almost holds onto the ball

  Let's start with his comments [and a few bits of personal commentary] and let you get a sense of what game he was playing (question topics and Heaps quotes taken from SLTrib.com).

In response to a question about his comfort level with the pace of the offense: 

Regardless of execution, in big games like this, if you don't turn the football over, then you win the game.
And our offense was able to move the football. Again, we were struggling to put the ball in the end zone. But most of that was turnovers.
Our opening drive [in which the center snapped the ball over Heaps' head, Heaps recovered, and proceeded to fumble in the end zone, leaving a Utah lineman to fall on it for a touchdown], not a big deal, I try to make a heads-up play by throwing that ball out of bounds, so we [could] punt it off, but it slips out of my hand.
Then the next few, just costly, especially when we are down in the blue zone, and we are about to score [the 'blue zone' is apparently the BYU version of the Red Zone, where normal teams go to score points, but Cougars apparently go in order to almost score points]. The momentum change there is so big, and quite frankly, I mean the true fact of the matter is, that this game could be much different, and that's the truth.
I don't care who wants to say what, you know, if we don't turn the football over in those critical situations, then this game is different.

On whether the offense took a step backward:

It depends on what aspect you want to look at [Oh, okay.  How about in the aspect of "winning games"?]. As far as taking care of the football and being the offense that our defense can count on, no, we didn't prove that today. Did we show that we can move the football, that we have talent? That we have the ability to be great and show potential in that? Yes.
And that's what I am going to hold onto, is the potential to be great. Because we can. And we will be great.  [One thing B-school has taught me is that potential counts for jack at the end of the game.  You don't step on the field to look back and say, "We got our butts kicked, but our potential?!?   Man we had some badass potential out there!"].
We are going to work our tails off this week. It is unexcusable [sic], and as an offensive guy, our defense battled, and they played hard. But we put them in constant situations where they were pinned up within the 20-yard-line. But they held them to field goal after field goal.
Like I said earlier, if we take care of the football, this game is a different story. Because of the way our defense was playing, and our offense was moving the ball well. 

On how to bounce back:

If the guys aren't motivated to get this bad taste out of their mouth, then I don't know what is going to motivate anybody. You know, a loss like this, especially when we knew the game could be so much different, you walk away from this game and you are shaking your head, just because of the fact that we gave them the game, we gave them the opportunity to score points. We gave them the short field. Other than a drive or two that they had, our defense was stopping them.  Utah's offense didn't do anything special.

I just love reading these quotes.  It is as though the quotes were taken from last year's game that went down to the last play, and BYU came up just short.  Makes it feel like such a close game.  Now let's take a look at the actual game that the rest of the world watched.

Utah:   54
BYU:  10

Follow Heap's fact train on how this could have been such a different game:

IF we hadn't turned the ball over seven times, twice by me inside our own 10 yard line, and
IF we had scored every time we almost scored, and
IF our totally superior awesome defense had been able to keep the Utah offense to only field goals, and
IF we had been able to run the ball against the Utah defense,
THEN we would have totally owned those clowns.

An old British friend of mine used to be fond of saying, "And if the queen had bollocks, she'd be the king."

Jake Heaps makes a heads-up play

If.  Potential.  Almost scored.  Would have been.  You don't hear winners talk about these things after a game.  Unless it is the winner saying, "If I'd had a chance to talk to that loser's girlfriend after the game, she'd have totally come to the after party with me.  I almost scored.  That would have been great."

The turnovers were huge, and he's right, that was entirely the offense's fault.  But his refusal to give the Utes any sort of credit for playing a great game is pretty blind.  While he put up more than respectable numbers himself (since we're not counting the turnovers; 27-50, 305 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, 2 lost fumbles), he was forced to throw 50 times because the Utah defense held them to 11 TOTAL yards of rushing on 22 attempts.

BYU almost scoring in the Blue Zone

 Of course, Heaps is right about his defense.  They forced the Utah offense to punt once, so there was that silver lining.  They also held the Utes twice on fourth down.  AND they forced them to kick three field goals, the first of which the Ute's kicker missed by a half-mile.  That's six points, Jake.  What about the other 48 points?  The Utah offense found the endzone seven times.  Seven touchdowns vs. three field goals.  Even if every one of the touchdowns was reduced to a field goal, that's nine fields goals.  That's 27 points.  How are you with math, Jake?  27-10 = 17.  The Utes still would have beat you by 17.

Heaps holding onto his potential greatness

Yup.  Utah's offense only had one or two drives, but other than that, the Cougar defense was stopping them all night.  I mean, Utah's quarterback, Wynn, he only threw for 239 yards and two TDs.  And he threw a pick, too.  And it's not like their running game was any better than BYU's.  What's their running back's name?  White?  He only ran for 174 yards and three TDs.  Jeezy Pete's, people.  They didn't even get more than 500 yards in total offense.  481 yards is like, what, the distance I walk from my car to the fro-yo shop with my date? 

Utah's offense doing nothing special to the BYU defense

Somebody should have told the Cougars that the devotional on "Charity" this week did not mean giving the ball away. 

Heaps "giving" the Utes a chance to score

Heaps tripping over his own shoe laces.  NOT A BIG DEAL.

 I can't begin to tell you how much fun I had watching the game, and also writing about it today.  BYU quarterbacks never cease to put a smile on my face.  And the Cougar fans' tears are so sweet to the taste.

I've heard it said that ingratitude is one of the greatest sins.  So I want to take this opportunity to thank the BYU football team for so publicly and thoroughly soiling your drawers.  It made my weekend.

Man I Hate Myself Sometimes

It happened.  I went against all my better judgement, such as it is, and crossed over a line I had drawn in the sand long ago when I occupied a much higher moral ground.   I never thought I would debase myself in such a humiliating manner.  But I did.

I went on an internet date this summer.

 How did I end up here?  Well, mom made me promise to make more of an effort and stop spending so much time alone, much as I may prefer that sometimes to feeding/entertaining some other man's future wife.

But really that's only part of the deal.  Other components include living in a target-poor environment and my very limited time/funds to pursue such endeavors during school.  See, back in DC, there were a lot of single Mormons in what I would consider my age-appropriate dating pool, and very bright, interesting women at that.  Not that I maximized that when I was there, but I had options.  Here in AZ, my ward is significantly younger and more...shall we say "Mormon-y".  Which is totally sweet, and earnest, and wholesome.  But which of those words really describes someone that I would mesh well with?  I mean, I think I'm mostly a decent guy with certain favorable qualities to go with some of my less savory ones.  But that doesn't cut it for me.

It's not like I'm searching for some Lindsey Lohan type either.  I tried taking out a couple of the comely young lasses in my singles ward when I first moved here, and they were very nice.

Nice.

Not a positive word in a dating context.  It was like having dinner with a young June Cleaver.  Which is fitting, considering how many of my sweet sisters-in-faith live their lives according to a Leave It To Beaver script.  And lest I be criticized for being too hard on the sisters, many of the men are every bit as Ward Cleaver as the sisters are June, which is precisely what keeps the machine running.  Ward and June sit around the living room pining for some bygone day when words like "swell" and "golly" were part of the everyday vernacular.  The soda shop has been replaced by the frozen yogurt shop in the modern iteration of the show.

This may delight a less Humungus man, but I can only take so many fro-yo trips before I start looking for the spigot that's dispensing the Jack Daniels flavor.  And I don't even drink.

How do I cope?  I have to stop at the grocery store on the way home to buy a rotisserie chicken.  I take it home, tear my shirt off and consume the chicken bare-handed and bare-chested just so I can get a sense of manliness by pulling the drumsticks from their sockets and tearing the flesh from the bone.  My eyes glaze over, a faint smile tracing my lips as the grease runs down my chin and I contemplate how awesome I'd be if I had more chest hair.

Which, obsessing about my manliness?  Totally not me.  But the angst from the long procession of Sandra D. dream dates sometimes builds up inside of me until it boils over and I have to write something obnoxious like this as a counter-weight.  This, too, bothers me.     

Where does a guy like me fit in a Leave It To Beaver script?

So internet date.  I've discovered that people on the internet can be just as agonizingly boring as they are in real life.  Reading profiles can feel a bit like being a hiring manager scanning resumes, in that most of the time you want to shoot yourself in the face from the unoriginality.

(Actual profiles follow, all completely sic'd)

"I am a very outgoing girl who is pretty easy going. I love to do just about anything and will try every thing once."

You just described what 80% of the people on the internet think of themselves.  Way to shine, bright eyes.

"I'm shy at first but I can really open up and let loose when I get to know you. I love to be impulsive and just have a good time. I can be adventurous but also content with just staying in and watching a movie." 

You are also gifted at talking without saying anything of substance.  Sign me up for an hour at a dinner table with you!  No, make that two!

"I'm grounded and have a good head on my shoulders, but I also love to be spontaneous, travel, laugh and sometimes do nothing at all. I can usually be happy doing just about anything but really appreciate seeing new things in different countries, trying a new Italian restaurant, or playing Wii at midnight with my best friends. I'd like to say I'm well rounded."

And I'd like to say that you are boring me to death.  (I'd also like to say that I can be kind of a butthole sometimes.  Welcome to Dear Humungus, where I put my less-savory qualities on display for the world.)

Oh, and lest we forget, there are the princesses who demand that you recognize how lucky you are to be kissing their feet:

"Guys well, I want someone who is ambitious [Did you catch that, my dogs?  Ambitious.  Princess code for Dude Better Get Paid So He Can Take Care of Me.] and who has the same interests obviously! I want to be treated like the princess I am, I'm not high maintenance, I just know my worth! I want to be married to be honest, I want a family, it didn't work out so well the first time but hopefully I won't end up with anyone like that again!! [Yeah, I can't imagine what sort of guy would get tired of kissing your hiney.  Well pray tell, can you give me any specifics that you're looking for?]

This is how guys SHOULD be....
 
GIVE HER ONE OF YOUR T-SHIRTS TO SLEEP IN.
LEAVE HER CUTE TEXT MESSAGES.
KISS HER IN FR0NT 0F Y0UR FRIENDS.
TELL HER SHE L00KS BEAUTIFUL.
L00K HER IN THE EYES WHEN Y0U TALK T0 HER.
LET HER MESS WITH Y0UR HAIR.
MESS WITH HER HAIR.
INCLUDE HER IN ALL THINGS Y0U D0.
F0RGIVE HER F0R HER MISTAKES.
L00K AT HER LIKES SHE'S THE 0NLY GIRL Y0U SEE.
TICKLE HER EVEN WHEN SHE SAYS ST0P.
H0LD HER HAND EVEN WHEN Y0U ARE AROUND Y0UR FRIENDS.
WHEN SHE STARTS SWEARING AT Y0U TELL HER Y0U L0VE HER.
LET HER FALL ASLEEP IN Y0UR ARMS.
GET HER MAD, THEN KISS HER.
STAY UP WITH HER ALL NIGHT WHEN SHES SICK.
WATCH HER FAV0RITE M0VIE WITH HER
KISS HER F0REHEAD.
LET HER WEAR Y0UR CL0THES.
WHEN SHES SAD, HANG 0UT WITH HER.
LET HER KN0W SHE'S IMP0RTANT.
KISS HER IN THE RAIN.
CALL HER EVERY NIGHT.
AND WHEN Y0U FALL IN L0VE WITH HER, TELL HER."

Man.  Does anybody else want to kill themselves after reading that?  And the kicker is that she's not even clever enough to write that bathroom drivel on her own.  You know how I know?  I've seen the same list on a half dozen other profiles.   

Anyway, you get some sense of what this universe is like, right?  The emails are not much better.   But at least I can let my obnoxiousness off the leash and have a little fun with those:

NP:  I must say, at a glance you seem like a man with depth. I wonder how it's possible that girls in line at your door [sic]!!! 

Me:  It's easy enough when they don't know where you live. Hurray for internet! It provides such anonymity.  But I'm not telling a person without a photo anything they don't already know, amiright? Or amiright?

NP:  LOL! I'm glad you figured out what I was trying to say.....and yes, no photo does help me keep a low profile. I've had a couple bad experiences with men who seem a little too superficial. I'm not a tall, blue-eyes, big chested, long-legged gal. I'm not ugly my any means, but I want a man to be attracted to my intelligence and abilities [Good luck with that].
So seriously, what qualities seem to be lacking in the women you meet or date? In that you live in another state, I am not trying to pursue you....but I figure you could give me some interesting perspectives on life, dating or women.

Me:  Well, putting aside the wisdom of asking for perspective on life, dating or women from a man who has obviously failed in some degree at all three, I would say that your question relies on one awfully large, and likely faulty assumption:

That I meet and/or date women. Church members, at least. I mean, I meet plenty of non-Mormon women through school or work, but that's a different can of worms.

What's lacking in the women I have failed with in the past? It has been different for each one. The one thing I am acutely aware of is that the common denominator in all of those failed relationships has been me, and most of the women are now married. 

[Shockingly, and thankfully, this one did not respond.]

TM:  So if I am not hip with rock and roll what can I say to impress you?  

Me:  You should say, "STG, I can throw a Volkswagen a half block. Carry you to bed is no problem." But you have to say it with a Swedish accent (not yodeling though). 

[STG is my screen name.  In my “about me” section, I claim to be looking for a woman who can carry me to bed when I fall asleep watching TV.]

TM:  STG stands for? And who sang about the volkswagon? I cannot do a Swedish accent but will a German accent do? Do you have a singer's voice to go with all your lyrics?

Me:  Not unless you consider Jimmy Buffett a "singer's voice".

What does STG stand for? Now you can really show your rock n' roll hipness. It stands for "Smell The Glove."

TM:  So are you a dancer? I am just trying to get the picture here... Or is this all just your outlet because you have a desk job all day and have to break loose at the end?

Me:  You know, I've had a number of people ask me what I'm doing here, and I don't think I've ever come up with a good answer. I guess the most accurate is that mom says I can't sit around in the dark by myself anymore (much as I may enjoy that), and the thought of going to anything so reeking of desperation as a Mormon singles event makes me want to stick my head in a boiling pot of water.

And yet somehow, here I am on the interwebz making ze small talks. Even worse, I know. But at least I can do it from my couch while I listen to some good tunes and get some ironing done.

How about you, what brings you to [internet purgatory site]? And don't say a mother's shame. I already used that one.  [T.M. didn't hang on much longer after this].

So you can see I'm a little bit poorly-behaved online.  Women seem to mostly like that.  Eventually, one of these internet women here in Arizona made it through the barbed wire and got me to ask her out.  But here's the problem with a story like this:  the lead-up to the event ends up being much more enjoyable than the event itself.  The date wasn't torture, but not all that interesting either.  It was like grabbing lunch with an old work colleague.  I managed to avoid hanging myself by my shoelaces when I got home.  Sometimes you gotta give thanks for the small miracles. 

 

Once Around the Bronze Buddha

I've been grappling with how to write about my trip to China, and I'm not sure there really is a good way to tell the story of a laowai (foreigner) so far from home in one sitting.  So as the memories hit me, these may trickle out.  For example, the other day I had a lucky turn of events.  The thought "Once around the bronze Buddha" went through my head, and I couldn't help but smile.

We had about two months in China.  In the middle of the program, we got a week off to travel and see the country a little bit.  Two buddies and I flew to Xi'an, the ancient capital of China during the hayday of the Silk Road.  Not long before leaving the states, I had re-watched Crouching Tiger and got curious about where it was filmed, because the scenery was amazing.  Turns out some of the scenes I loved were shot at Holy Mt. Wudang.

I call it Holy Mt. Wudang because it is one of the most holy mountain ranges in Taoism.  Its peaks are peppered with Taoist temples, and it is the destination of many Chinese pilgrims every year.  It is also the birthplace of Wudang- or Wutang-style kung fu, and draws martial arts pilgrims as well.  As opposed to the hard-striking, power movements of Shaolin-style, Wudang is called the 'internal' kung fu.  It is not about destroying your opponent.  It is about making your opponent destroy themselves.  The creator of this style is said to have been inspired by a fight he witnessed between a snake and a magpie.  The snake was constantly in motion, circling, shifting, eluding the magpie's strikes.  All the while, it watched the magpie until the magpie revealed its weakness, and then struck when the bird exposed itself.  This clip from Crouching Tiger is a good example of the fluid motions of the style.  It's beautiful to watch:

Turns out that Mt. Wudang is just a four hour bus ride south of Xi'an.  So despite being non-Taoist, non-martial artists, we decided to make pilgrims of ourselves and take a mid-week vacation from our vacation.

We pulled in at the base of the mountain around two in the afternoon and found that we were the only laowai around.  There would likely not be a soul on this mountain who could speak English.  We became pretty adept at getting what we needed through highly exaggerated pantomiming and flapping of hands.  The visual spectacle got a lot of laughs, as the effect was probably similar to what you'd get by telling a deaf person in sign language to speak up.  Our gestures go to 11.

From base camp, you take about a 35-45 minute bus ride to the second base camp, about half way to the summit, with a stop along the way for a particularly popular structure, Purple Cloud Temple.  We decided to hit this complex on the way up, so we didn't have to come back down to see it.  It is one of the best-preserved temples on the mountain, and was a good introduction to the trip.

Tucked away in the mountain side with the mother of all koi ponds in front

Climbing all these stairs was a harbinger of things to come

Just me and some tired old yeye

 

The detail on the buildings was incredible

This was the norm.  Little boys apparently need a little more freedom than the girls.

I loved this scene with the lady monk.  Maybe not "door of the week", Miss B, but lovely nonetheless.

Meditating?  Or forgot what he came out here to get?

More detail on the building, these little guys holding up the center spire.

 After Purple Cloud, we caught another bus up to the midway base camp where the hotels were.  The previous weekend had been a national holiday and the places had been packed, but now there was almost nobody on the mountain.  So as soon as they saw the three laowai get off the bus, the hotel workers were all following us up the road trying to convince us to stay in their concrete death traps.  Who do you think had the upper hand in negotiating room rates on this one?  That's right.  The three of us got overnight accommodations for $20.  For all three of us!  We dropped off our bags and headed out to "hike" one more temple called Nanyan before dark.  Nanyan is one of the coolest temples in Wudang, built into the side of a cliff face.  If any of you have seared your retinas with the abomination that was the Karate Kid starring Jackie Chan as Pat Morita, you'll recognize the incense burner overlooking the lake.

Nanyan from afar

Winding path, getting closer

Taken from the backside of the mountain

The trash receptacles were one of the best gifts on the mountain

Watching the sunset from outside the entrance

The incense pot overlooking the lake.  I've walked in Jackie's footsteps

Brad taking in the awesome aura of Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith

After watching the sun set from the mountainside, we needed dinner in a bad way.  There were about two dozen restaurants lining the street with the hotels, and again, besides the workers, we were nearly the only people there.  We stopped once briefly to consider where to eat and were thronged by servers waiving menus in our faces and pawing at us like some glutton's version of a Madonna video.  As we stood deliberating over the identical menus (literally photocopies of one another), another laowai waded into the crowd and struck up a conversation with us.  Talk about a small world, the guy was a Ute!  He was of the 'martial arts pilgrim' variety and owned a chain of kung fu dojos in California and Utah.

We decided on a place to eat and invited our new friend Mike to join us, which turned out to be a lot of fun.  We got to talking about martial arts, and how the body sometimes just tells you you're done before your brain will admit it.  As an example, he offered to choke me out to show me how quick it can happen, to which I eagerly assented.  Not to be left out, my travel companions, Brad and Peter request a ride on the Blackout Express.  I only managed to get my camera out in time for a crappy blurred shot of Peter tapping out.

Go to sleep!

We had so much fun with our new friend, we invited him to climb with us to the Golden Summit on the morrow.  He accepted the invitation and we agreed to meet up for an 8am start.  We had to get moving somewhat early, because we had to catch the bus back to Xi'an that afternoon at 3pm.  We thought we'd have plenty of time, but we had no idea the amount of stairs we would have to climb in the morning.  It was four solid hours of stairs.  It was rough.  Rough.  But oddly uplifting as well, hiking from one scruffy temple complex to another on the way to the Golden Summit.  Even though I have a hard time wrapping my head around the blue and gold gods, the meaning of spiritual devotion and pilgrimage were concepts familiar to me.

At the summit, the temple complex on the top has many shrines and buildings, with the Golden Temple at the center.

One of the side buildings sat inconspicuously up a set of stairs, and I would have totally missed it had I not seen people climbing in and out of the tight doorway.  To miss this would have been tragic to the success of the rest of our trip.  So much of what happened over the rest of our time in China stemmed from our observation of the superstitious ritual we participated in within its walls.

This small, pitch-black room was the Turnaround Palace.  Inside is a bronze shrine to Zhen Wu, the Perfect Warrior, but for some reason I remember the plaque on the building describing the statue as a bronze buddha.  The shrine is about 10 X 10, with a narrow corridor no more than 15" wide surrounding the whole thing.  The faithful pilgrim enters on the right of the shrine, squeezing sideways into the space between the wall and the shrine, feeling his way through the inky blackness to emerge on the far side having earned the good will of the Perfect Warrior (hence the post title, Once Around The Bronze Buddha.)  We, of course, earned a nod from Zheng Wu.  It would serve us well over the next few weeks. 

Getting started

This was a regular scene on the mountain

I found little gems like this all over

I wasn't lying about the trash receptacles

Three pilgrims

Noted.  Thanks.

It is priceless, isn't it?

Stairway to Heaven...'s Gate

I almost died on this one

Mike and Brad needed a break on this one

Oh, what, you thought you were done with stairs?

Stopped to make friends at the top of that last staircase

Of course, if you get tired, these guys will carry you to the top.  For a price.

Lest you think the trash cans provided all the fun

More gems

Maybe I should have called it Effectual Mt. Wudang

Sorry, we're fresh out

Probably says something about Wudang Mountain

Do you think they mean me?

The thinking man's trash can

Can you feel it?

This is the angry god Benhua, god of punishment. 

The climactic Golden Temple, well tarnished by the weather

These brass lockets lined all of the handrails around the summit

Hardcore scenery, indeed

 
What a climb.  It took us so long to get up and down the mountain, we weren't sure we would make our bus.  We got the absolute slowest driver on the mountain on the way back down to the station from the hotel.  The instant the doors opened at the base of the mountain, I took Pete's bag so that he could sprint to the station on the off-chance that the bus hadn't left, while Brad and I lugged the bags at a jogger's pace.  I thought, "Come on, Perfect Warrior, don't fail us now."

As we turned the corner to the home-stretch, we caught sight of our bus pulled off to the side of the exit gate and Pete standing with one foot on the first step, one foot on the pavement, catching his breath.  The bus had been pulling out and he had managed to chase it down with his lightning fast speed.

As I collapsed into my seat and wiped the sweat from my brow, the thought "Once around the bronze buddha" went through my head.  We were lucky.  It was the first of many lucky occurrences during our travels together.

If you've read this far, immersed in uncomfortable darkness these last 15 minutes or so, you've earned a token for the faithful.  Your emergence from the shadows has earned you the good fortune of The Humungus.  Go forth and prosper.