(Attention 24 Hour Fitness Dallas: I appreciate that you think it’s a nice service to your patrons to have only hot water available for showers, but some of us are crazy, and want to take cold showers.
Luckily, there are four of your locations within (roughly) equal distance from where I’m living – one of you surely can meet my needs.)
If any of you are holdovers from my old site, you know I have a great deal of respect for Mark Cuban.
He wrote a great post yesterday about getting rich. Here is an excerpt:
Before or after work and on weekends, every single day, read everything there is to read about the business. Go to trade shows, read the trade magazines, spend a lot of time talking to the people you do business with about their business and the people they buy from.
This is not a short term project. We aren’t talking days. We aren’t talking months. We are talking years. Lots of years and maybe decades. I didn’t say this was a get rich quick scheme. This is a get rich path.
In my business, I run into so many writers, actors, and “producers” who know absolutely nothing about the actual business, it amazes me. Especially today, where every bit of information on Earth is at your fingertips, there’s no excuse for ignorance expect laziness.
Anyway, there are no jokes here, I just thought it was worth reading.
All the old cliches about “taking 15 years to become an overnight success” and “luck is a combination of preparation and opportunity” are true – I think it’s good to remember it now and then.
(Also, and related to item one, as I went to a new 24-Hour Fitness this morning. It seems like a lot of Dallas streets simply turn into other streets without announcement or fanfare of any kind.
This makes people like me get lost, and suddenly the 24 Hour Fitness isn’t (roughly) equal distance from where I’m living anymore.)
Go put this in like other places:
Being that I’ll be in Dallas for Halloween, I’d better not be what I usually am, which is “Obnoxious Cowboy”.
I’m already 100% sure I’ll be shot while I’m there simply from stray fire from the varmint hunters, and I don’t think I should do anything to encourage additional shootings.
As such, here is a list of alternative costumes that can make for both a unique look and a fun evening. Please let me know which I should go with:
1) A Chair
2)
3)
4)
That’s all I’ve got so far – I guess I’ll update it as I think of more ideas. I don’t know if it can get cooler than that, though.
In other news of Saturday morning, I took a hot shower, just to see what would happen.
I hated it – first of all, you’re standing there waiting for the water to heat up, which takes awhile. Then you just kinda move slower in there, because you’re not getting pounded with cold water.
The worst thing, though? After about a minute and a half, I couldn’t breathe right. Seriously – it was like standing in a really humid Ohio summer day, and it was horrible.
I tried to manage for another 2-3 minutes. Keep in mind with a cold shower, I’d already be halfway dry by now.
So after a little more torture, I finally relented and turned off the hot water, and the cold felt great – it was like being released from a bear trap or something.
Anyway, I got out, and of course the mirror is all fogged up, so I can’t do my flexing session right away.
All in all, the hot shower was a terrible experience, I’m never doing it again, and I just cut myself for about 45 minutes over the whole thing.
Finally, it’s really sad that Paul Newman died, but if one more person comes up to me and says, “I’m even more sad than Robert Redford,” I’m gonna pop.
There’s no way you’re more sad than Robert Redford about this. First of all, they were in movies together, which means they were best friends in real life.
Secondly, Robert Redford is an actor, which means even if he seems not as sad as you, he may just be acting not as sad to help others stay strong.
Go put this in like other places:
There’s only one thing I like less than other Brians who think they think about airplanes more than I think about them, and that’s politics.
For example, read this headline from an MSNBC article of this morning:
President: Financial markets dealing with steps taken to foster stability
That just so sound difficult in terms of reading. I don’t want to read that – is foster stability different than orphan stability? Regular stability? People with parents?
(QUESTION – Are adults (age 18+) whose parents have passed away orphans, or is there like an equivalent for “widow” wrt this?)
I’d much rather read this article:
Marc Guggenheim Offers An Update On ‘Green Lantern’ Film
I mean, in the former article, you get all kinds of stuff you have to look up in a dictionary, while in the second, you get to read about a guy who makes giant hammers with his imagination.
In the first, you get the story of a bunch of guys getting a free $85,000,000,000 for doing a bad job. In the second, a guy saves the entire galaxy from aliens and the color yellow.
Just the fact that you only have to learn about one dude as opposed to a bunch of them makes it better.
And think aboot this – if Green Lantern never actually gets made, then I’ll never know what would’ve happened in a movie that never existed. Is that how you want to go through life? I don’t.
One last thing, because I’ve gotten two emails on it – this is what you’re going for in the cold shower experience.
If you shiver and cower from it, you’re missing the entire point. Cheesy? Yes. True? Also yes. Or “yes, also” if you’re like that.
SERIOUS POLITICAL/SOCIAL NOTE: As someone who has had their email hacked and abused before, this whole thing with Palin’s email sucks.
I’m don’t care what her politics are or how many meece she’s shot or how many babies her kids adopt – this shouldn’t happen.
Go put this in like other places:
Well, that was a nice two weeks of not worrying aboot pissing everyone off if I don’t write something one day.
Old ESPN friend Henry Abbot hooked up a link via his True Hoop blog, who any of you arrived from my old website surely read already.
That was the result as of like 5:00 Pacific lasterday…obviously it won’t hold 100%, but you all know how infectious my virtual voice is. So, welcome to my blog about airplanes.
Anyway, Henry and I exchanged some emails, which was basic “what-up/how you been/I like things/etc”, until this one came back:
Tuesday 8:45-8:47 How to be a beast in the shower stall. (Meet at lockers.)
Here’s what happened for me: I turned the shower on and got in, totally forgetting I was on a mission to eat pain for breakfast.
It was warm. I turned it even warmer. Then I was like “holy crap, it’s beast time, I forgot!”
And I instantly turned it 100% cold, sticking my head straight in it.
The cold water straight froze my head, which quickly adjusted, but as it tinkered with the rest of me it felt pretty cold. It took some spine for me to turn around and get “all in.”
But I did it for a minute or two, and felt pretty freaking relaxed. When I turned the shower off, and stepped out, I was beaming. I went straight to the mirror to check out my pores.
I’m playing hoops tonight, so I have another cold shower on my dance card in a few hours
Two important things – first, Henry’s head is covered with a lack of hair. His experience had to be totally different from mine – I’m about eight beers from shaving my head, just to experience it.
The far more important thing here is that Henry is heading for ESPN colleague David Thorpe’s IMG Basketball Academy for a “we gonna make the media throw up” weekend of training like the pros.
If you’re not familiar with Thorpe, he trains a lot of NBA guys in the off-season as a coach-ish game doctor, and one of his philosophies is that guys need to learn to “beast”, ie play all out, all the time.
(I believe Charles Barkley, in talking about “rebounding techniques”, said he has one: GO GET THE DAMN BALL. Putting that in context, he was good at beasting.)
Alas, I suggested Henry introduce this whole cold shower thing to Thorpe, so if sometime this season you start reading stories about a wave of eccentric NBA players taking cold showers as a way to increase their intensity and beasting abilities, please remember to remember where it all started.
That’s right – the Armenian sublet, where Brian Who Thinks About Airplanes lived for one month in 2008. Throw a plaque up already.
NOTE: That link from ESPN was gold, because there are two things I truly love: attention, and pretending I don’t like attention.
I can’t remember what my first big link was on my old site – I think that was just built through hard work, because it started at the same time as Deadspin, which wasn’t Deadspin-Deadspin yet.
Go put this in like other places:
My roommate has deemed me either a “Cold-Showering CRAZY dood or Unorthodox Health Guru”.
I can’t vouch for his unorthodox choice of which parts of your sentence to capitalize, but I can say he’s been converted to the cold shower method.
I think I’m on Day 4 of this now, and it’s really become pretty routine and easy.
Not easy per se, but I do think the body is adjusting. Like I still have to take a moment and prepare to turn on the water, but overall there’s no sense of “can I get through this”, and I don’t hurry anything along to get out.
I can’t think of a reason I’d go back to taking hot showers – this is healthier, quicker, and I feel cleaner when I’m done.
It also makes me seem eccentric to people, which let’s just admit full-out, I like.
I’ve also realized there’s a slim possibility I don’t just seem eccentric, but that I am eccentric.
I can emphasize this by making words I want to stress come out in italics.
Coincidentally, there’s a style of weightlifting I occasionally cycle through called eccentric training, wherein you go super-slow on the negative portion of your repetition.
So basically, when I’m introduced to new people from now on, and the introducer says, “This is Brian, he takes nothing cold showers,” and the person answers, “My! You seem quite eccentric!”, I can lean in real close and be like, “Five seconds on the negative part of the bicep curl, eh pal?”, wink, and walk away.*
This plays into both definitions of the word, each of which I encompass.
*At least 15 grammatical errors in that paragraph – minimum.
Go put this in like other places:
I just was Googling “The Crepes Are in the Oven” – I needed to find the old post to send to someone, and wanted to see where it landed in Google.
(The old post was jacked up in the server move, so I’ve put the key portions up on my Flickr page. French version is here. English is here.)
The search engine decided what I really wanted was “The Grapes Are in the Oven“, which makes even less sense than the crepes version of the phrase.
I mean, if you were going to pick one of two things to put in an oven, which would it be – crepes or grapes?
It’d be crepes, right?
NOTE: I’d really like to have one of these now, so if these rumors are true, I’ll be doing that whole “tackle UPS guy” like the ladies did back in the Beanie Baby Raids of the late 1990s. Which reminds me, I need to tell that story sometime.
NOTE 2: Based on the squealing and swearing I just heard from the bathroom, I’m fairly certain my roommate just tried to take a cold shower. He was talking about it, and watched Fight Club last night and everything.
Go put this in like other places:
(So glad I didn’t bother to search out that game lasterday…Browns-Steelers, I will watch online tonight.)
Here it is:
I’ve been reading for about a week now….STOP TAKING COLD SHOWERS! Are you crazy???? :)
(haven’t showed it to your Dad yet…afraid he might think you’ve totally flipped out!
That is, for those of you without the skills of deduction, from my mom.
(Yeah, it could’ve been from my dad’s mistress, but we don’t really get along, and I can’t remember the last time she emailed me.)
Cold shower #2 was just taken – here are more things I’ve noticed, and you know how I like things:
1) The mirror in the bathroom doesn’t steam up.
2) You start to dry instantly, and the entire drying process is faster than after a warm shower.
3) This is by no means easy. While it’s somewhat empowering, you want to be done. Beyond the 1-minute “stand there with clenched fists and feel powerful” phase, you get down to business and get finished.
4) You’re not cold when the shower is over. In fact, as soon you turn the water off, you feel this rush of warmth and energy.
Overall, I feel like this is not only good mentally, but it’s saving me a lot of time, due to numbers 1-3 above.
NOTE: My old friend Jordi’s website, The Serious Tip, turned two today – congratulations!
He also was wondering what, if any, sports blogs I read anymore. This is the list, direct from my RSS reader:
Blog Maverick – Mark Cuban’s blog. I don’t know if this even counts as sports – in fact, just now, I moved it over to “Tech/General Blogs”.
(That link goes to his post about why John McCain not knowing about computers is frightening. I completely agree.)
Deadspin – I don’t really “read” it – just skim the headlines in case there’s something interesting, which often there is.
The Big Lead – Only for the links/round-up posts.
True Hoop – As a (somewhat disenchanted) NBA fan, of course. Plus Henry writes about things that aren’t written about elsewhere.
Brian Windhorst’s Beacon Journal Blog – Cavs insight. Brian is also a good guy.
That’s all there is for me anymore. I figure anything significant that happens in sports or on sports blogs, I will catch wind of through those and ESPN DOT COM.
I also check other places now and then just for the hell of it, but most of my regular reading is entertainment/film stuff, and personal blogs of people I know or find interesting.
Go put this in like other places:
I looked myself in the eye and realized my “have to start things on Sunday”, while true, was just an excuse, and went ahead with this whole thing today.
The determined method was as such – I would get in the shower, and THEN turn the water on.
One, you’re not waiting for the water to warm up, so there’s no reason to turn it on first. Two, turning the knob is much less of a “leap” than stepping into a cold shower.
It went really well – I feel great. (I literally just got out a couple minutes ago.)
I decided I’d stand there, powerfully facing the water for 30 seconds, then turn around for another 30 seconds, then actually wash.
(This “facing down the cold water” period is important, because it’s the part that makes you feel really cool.)
After the first 30 seconds, the whole thing really felt good – I’d wager it felt better than a warm shower, actually.
The turn-around was no problem, because by this time I was all into just killing this cold water.
Then I like washed, and that was that. A real bonus is you don’t get that “oo-oo-ooh it’s so cold when you step out of the shower.
My skin all feels really tight as well, which is one of the things they said on this page.
I’m gonna do this for like a month at least, or until my mom reads this and tells me I’m doing something bad to myself. I’ll ask why it’s bad, she’ll say she doesn’t know, I’ll say I like it and I’m doing it, and then she’ll call me weird.
The conversation will conclude by a mutual determination that it’s her fault, just like how I’m afraid of dogs.
Oh, I’m also going to tell all my environmentalist friends I’m doing this to help the climate crisis. They’ll hear “help the climate crisis”, forget the first part because they’re so shocked, and everyone wins.
Go put this in like other places:
(I think I said the best piece of that Cavaliers trade was gonna be Delonte West at one point. I still think I was right.
I’m glad they re-signed him – say what you want about Danny Ferry, but he’s been successful at not weighing this team down with horrible contracts for role players.
Minus Ben W and Wally Z, but those weren’t his signings, and are valuable and soon-to-be valuable expiring deals.)
I did a lot of thinking overnight about this all-cold shower movement, and I know once I do it, it’s in place for awhile.
That said, I’m starting tomorrow, because that’s just the way my brain works: Sunday is the first day of the week. When starting something new, you do it on Sunday.
Like I said, though – I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit.
By my estimation, this is kinda like skydiving, or bungee jumping, or cutting yourself – you just have to zone out and go. I’ve done none of these things, so there’s no frame of reference.
On the other hand, part of the point is to stand there and take the cold shower – like in Fight Club, where Edward Norton is getting the chemical burn on his hand, and he’s trying to zone out, but Brad Pitt is like, “no, you have to live this – that’s the whole point”. (Paraphrased.)
I’m sure this will all be so much better when it’s like in the script page of that post – where I can like walk into a chamber of cold water, blasting from multiple directions – but this will do for now.
One thing I will do today is watch Ohio State v USC, although I’m not half as pumped for it as one would think, considering I went to Ohio State and everything.
Truth be told, I never became a huge Ohio State fan – while in Columbus, I was involved heavily in the activities surrounding game-days, without actually watching any games.
Like one time my friend and I gave some beer to some 14-year olds. Another time it was some 15-year olds. Then for this one game, some teens of unknown age gave beer to us. (Read: karma.)
After that we’d all set stuff on fire, win or lose, so the games never mattered all that much.
Go put this in like other places:
Pretty much everything in this post references this previous post. While today that post is directly below, if this is found ten years from now, it may be a different story.
Thus, the link.
Why this post so soon after the last?
Well, a few realizations:
1) There was a day I would’ve instantly gone to GoDaddy and registered www.potatopartyclub.com, but that era has passed.
I currently own 51 domains. At least 45 of these will never, ever have anything done with them. That’s roughly a $450 value.
2) Nobody will believe this, and I didn’t even realize it until a few minutes ago, but I’ve never eaten a baked potato before. Ever never ever.
I’m almost certain this is because I smelled sour cream once and gagged. It’s strange not so much because of the website name, but because it’s strange, period.
3) I just sent my roommate the following email:
Yo -
Starting tomorrow, I’m going to take an ice cold shower every morning. My intent is to stand there completely still for like a minute, making fists and feeling powerful, then I’ll like wash and stuff. So there might be screaming or squealing or something – just be aware. I’ll try to explain when I see you.
Don’t let the werewolves get you – later -
Brian
I just have to do it! I think this will be so cool, no pun intended. Obviously, I’ll have a full report.
Go put this in like other places:
