“The reason I love the sea I cannot explain — it’s physical. When you dive you begin to feel like an angel. It’s a liberation of your weight.” - Jacques-Yves Cousteau
I think we’d all like to liberate ourselves from a little more weight than we managed to this week. Not a banner 7 days for the pork ass challenge. Indy was as kind to DVS as Newport was to me, but our lapses were relatively small, and we still have 4 weeks to go. Whether our strategy is going to be focused weight training and cardio, the index finger or a Jimmy Tango-esque meth binge, one thing is for sure - it’s crunch time, folks.
- Monster >> Current: 268 / Last Week - 265 / Target 255 / Gained 3 - Smash >> Current: 137 / Last Week - 138 / Target 129 / Lost 1 - Pyeman >> Current: 226 / Last Week - 224 / Target 215 / Gained 2 - DVS >> Current 248 / Last Week - 246 / Target 210 / Gained 2 - Aubz >> Current: 132 / Last Week - 132 /Target 125 / Lost 0 - BDoyle >> Current: 184 - / Last Week - 188 / Target 175 / Lost 3 - Sly >> Current: 211 - / Last Week - 213 / Target 175 / Lost 2 - Piglet >>> Current: 146 / Last Week - 147 / Target 135 / Lost 1 - Not Lance >>> Current: 166 / Last Week - 168 / Target 161 / Lost 2 - Greg >> Current: 179 / Last Week - 183/ Target 170 / Lost 4 - Venditti >> Current: 229 / Last Week - 230 / Target 219 / Lost 1 - Ka-Rista >> Current: 158 / Last Week - 158 / Target 140 / Lost 0
Smash lost a pound, but that may have just been blood - take care of that hand! Exerting himself while moving house has been kind to Doyle. Greg continues to bust ass at the new restaurant so I assume his impressive progress has continued. Venditti’s wonderful Welland wedding is fast approaching, and I’m curious to see if he’ll be taking in his tux. Check back throughout the day to see the new tale of the tape. We’re almost in the home stretch, and this sort of dedication is not easy. Don’t give up, and remember your porky support group is right here.
Sorry to spring that on you. I suppose it’s as good a subject of discussion as anything else I’ve ever written about on here. I am currently trying to proofread a press release about window blinds, so obviously my mind is bound to wander. I don’t remember high-fiving any hippies during my walk to work, and I definitely didn’t wear this dress shirt to Amherst recently, so why do my hands reek of patchouli? This isn’t a rhetorical question, people. You may explicate.
The only people I shook hands with today were the plumbers who came to replace a zone valve in my building. I think it goes without saying - patchouli is to plumbers what an under-counter carbon filter is to Chris Barron. So the mystery continues. Stay tuned for the weigh-in tomorrow. It’s not going to be pretty.
We’re sitting in Newport, after an afternoon on the boat, watching the amazing lacrosse game between UMASS and UVA on TV - The Cinderella story surrounding UMASS’s appearance in the D1 finals has been the talk of the house all weekend. What a great way to spend Memorial Day, although I’d be shaking the hand of a veteran if I had one handy. Anyway, since I found a laptop sitting in the kitchen, I figured I’d send the team some happy thoughts for the second half.
Home now… The lengths to which I devastated my diet is eclipsed only by my sunburn. The gallery is your typical fare - boat, beer, dogs, kids and Kingman. But for the first time in ages I added captions to most of the photos. Just like the old days. Now, get some aloe vera on yourselves and get to bed.
I made a very bad joke on the blog earlier this week, where I ignorantly referred to one of the sacred relics from the summer Saint’s Feasts as “creepy”. I spent about as much time thinking about the comment as I did typing it, and have found out today that I offended many of my neighbors as a result. My remorse stems from a true admiration of this neighborhood, rather than any stab at self-serving diplomacy. I have lived here seven years for a reason.
I hope that my continued charitable activities in the North End, and my many positive remarks on the site about the neighborhood and the people within it over the years, will attest to where my heart truly stands in regards to it. I also maintain a separate website devoted to the area, which is a labor of love. I have actively worked to maintain good relationships with my neighbors over the years, and frequently go out of my way to meet as many new residents as possible. That is what makes this incident all the more unfortunate and unacceptable.
I do not pretend or assume to be a true North Ender, and for that reason I can never fully understand how my remarks effected those that are. I would like to ask that you excuse me, and have agreed to redesign the NEMPAC website as a gesture of apology and pennance. I had already been asked to help migrate it to a new webserver, but I know for a fact the organization wants to pay to have it re-vamped, and I am offering to do this myself now for the first time - because I truly feel awful and have to try and make things right.
I was raised a Catholic, have many Italian cousins and I am absolutely mortified that I have been responsible for generating so much offense. My Grandmother would surely slap me if she were still with us. It was a terrible comment, and I will regret making it for a very long time. My deepest apologies to you all.
Appetizer: How old were you when you got your first credit card? I was 27, unemployed and fairly desperate. I have been paying off the debt I incurred that year ever since. I will be fully out of the red in about 3 months, and I can’t wait. All the money I currently put towards said debt, that I’m not used to having and have learned to live without, will be invested. That’s why I’ve been making such a push lately to learn more about personal finance. I have a call with my advisor today at 4pm. Evil incarnate is Discover Card sending me, unsolicited, a checkbook tied to the CC account. Talk about a recipie for trouble. I paid my rent with it several times back in those days - I don’t harp on about corporate conspiracy theories much, but these filthy buggers need to be stopped.
Soup: When was the last time you felt out of place? It doesn’t happen often. A Bell Biv Devoe concert in 1988? Not really.
Salad: Did you have a curfew when you were a teenager? I can’t really remember. 11:30 seems to ring a bell for some reason, but that was really only freshman year at Lorne Park. My folks were pretty lax on the whole curfew thing, as I didn’t have female genitalia.
Main Course: Name a person from history with whom you have something in common. The way today is going so far? How does Richard Nixon sound?
Dessert: When you read a newspaper, which section do you go for first? I don’t read papers anymore. It’s all about the RSS, baby. But if I did, I’d just read it in order. No big whoop. I’m not a paper section skipper. You can all relax.
I love the new GB logo, and I have someone ready to make these shirts at a really low price - but I’m in marketing and I know better than to assume anything. Have a read about our forthcoming and exciting limited edition hockey t-shirts, and leave a comment on GB if you’d be interested in buying one for the low-low price of only $10. There’s next to no profit margin after shipping, and I just want to get a first run funded and off the presses. Is there a market? Is there a demand? Let us know.
Ryan sent me this. It’s so entertaining. If you’re a Pixies fan, you absolutely have to click through and check it out. Some guy named Matthew - with a love of the band that makes Mark David Chapman nervous - and coupled with an intimate knowledge of Pro Tools, has re-recorded a long list of Pixies songs in the guise of alternate famous bands/singers. And I can’t even pick a favorite, they’re all so eerily accurate. Prince, Jimi Hendrix, BeeGees, Sinatra, Brian Wilson… Here is the pentultimate list on another site, as Matthew’s MySpace page doesn’t have a complete list or downloadable versions.
Re-reading that paragrah, it’s really quite exceptionally confusing. Just trust me and check it out. And how a grown man can make himself sound so much like Tina Turner while singing my favorite Pixies song is enough to make me shudder/masturbate.
I’ll come clean - my favorite is Elvis doing #13 Baby.
The pork is flying fast and furious this week, as… maybe fast is a bad word. It’s 8pm and I haven’t posted today’s results yet. Rest assured, things are so ridiculous at work I’m considering becoming a shepherd, so don’t take it personally, you fat frigs - technically it’s still Wednesday. And as much as I’d love this site to degenerate into a series of infrequent posts about how I rarely have time to blog - because that would surely be spellbinding - we must press on, piggies.
- Monster >> Current: 268 / Last Week - 265 / Target 255 / Gained 3 - Smash >> Current: 138 / Last Week - 138 / Target 129 / Lost 0 - Pyeman >> Current: 224 / Last Week - 224 / Target 215 / Lost 0 - DVS >> Current 244 / Last Week - 246 / Target 210 / Lost 2 - Aubz >> Current: 132 / Last Week - 133 /Target 125 / Lost 1 - BDoyle >> Current: 187 - / Last Week - 188 / Target 175 / Lost 1 - Sly >> Current: 211 - / Last Week - 213 / Target 175 / Lost 2 - Piglet >>> Current: 147 / Last Week - 145 / Target 135 / Gained 2 - Not Lance >>> Current: 166 / Last Week - 168 / Target 161 / Lost 2 - Greg >> Current: 183 / Last Week - 187 / Target 170 / Lost 4 - Venditti >> Current: 230 / Last Week - 232 / Target 219 / Lost 2 - Ka-Rista >> Current: 158 / Last Week - 158 / Target 140 / Lost 0
So we’re at the halfway point. I’ve plateaued again, despite some pretty agressive and unhealthy tactics. I think that’s the problem, as we’ve established frequent smaller meals jack up the metabolism and avoid loss lulls. There is no way I will ever lost 14 pounds in the next 5 weeks, short of bird flu, so I have changed my target weight to 215. I haven’t weighed 215 since I got back from England in 1998, so that’s pretty acceptable come to think of it. I’m 6″4, afterall.
As it’s the halfway point, I think a graph or some other sort of visual representation is in order - so get your results in tonight and over Thursday and I’ll whip something together. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m fucking starving.
Has anyone else noticed that the evil girl (Ellen Page) in the new movie Hard Candy is Treena Lahey from Trailer Park Boys? Remember in Seasons one and two Mr. Lahey had a daughter living with him who wasn’t allowed to hang out with Ricky? Just me? OK. Well regardless, that’s her. I liked this movie a lot better when it was called Poison Ivy/The Crush but good for Ellen! She’s also in X3. Another Canuck on the foreward invasion force.
Do y’all get curious on those rare occasions where I talk about or let you in for a glimpse of what I do for a living? It’s rare, and for good reason - I have other blogs where I talk about SEO, and far too few hours in the day to prattle on about it incessantly. This is where I come to make the hooker jokes. Anyhew, in the next few days you’ll see me linking out to lots of strange things, and I just want you to know there’s a method to the madness.
More and more of my friends and neighbors are taking their businesses online, or going to work for companies with significant web presences. I’m going to save everyone a lot of money - because nobody wants to pay for this shit anyway. Here’s how you improve your Google rankings: Get sites to link to yours using your target market’s top search keywords. If I hypothetically had a client who sold Red Sox Tickets, for example - I would want to facilitate as many links as I could to their site which also read Red Sox Tickets. Your ultimate success depends on your budget (people won’t link to you for free, and reciprocal links cancel eachother out since the last big algorithm update) your patience and the competition. It’s bleeding edge stuff. Guerilla marketing. And surprisingly, not all that fun in the long run. You have little control over the results ultimately, and we all know how clients like those pesky “results”.
So forgive me over the next week or so if I drift into conversations about office coffee. Look the other way if I begin sweating whilst extrapolating about precision gauges or Amnisure. I’m not pregnant or studying to be an airplane mechanic. I’m just working here.
The bird flu task force on the lookout for bird flu in Bucharest were startled when an APB came through for a “crazy guy with bird flu”. It was quickly determined to be a false alarm, as the dispatcher had apparently fallen victim to bird flu.
Appetizer: What is the last thing you had to have repaired? I had the band repaired on an old Roots watch about 15 minutes ago. I found it while cleaning my room this week and dropped it off today while having lunch at the Sidebar. I found some of the damndest other things, too - photos I’d forgotten about, my dayplanner from University, home movies, etc.
Soup: If someone gave you $2,000 with the stipulation that you had to spend half of it on yourself and give the rest to charity, where would you spend the $1,000 and which charity would receive your remaining $1,000? I’d invest the first thousand in a mutual fund, and give the other thousand to the Animal Rescue League of Boston.
Salad: What is one of your favorite songs from the 1980s? I’ve already beaten this one to death, Falco.
Main Course: You enter a pet store. Which section do you go to first? Kitties and puppies. Alternately, if it were a shit pet store that only sells fish and crickets, crickets.
Dessert: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how athletic are you? I’m a solid 7. I walk about 25 miles a week, and go to the gym in my office building, too.
If I had the nads to take a stab at stand-up myself, I certainly wouldn’t want to do it in a packed house of hilljacks in Haverhill my first time out of the gate. I saw more victims of the S & L crisis last night than you’d probably find at a demolition derby. In spite of the pressure, the hostility and the overabundance of men who resembled the 50-year-old cousins of Dalton, I am beyond happy to report that Brunelli fucking KILLED.
When we got to Garibaldi’s - a musty-smelling, long and narrow social club with one ill-equipped bartender, the place was empty and I could tell Mark was just as nervous as all hell. About 5 of us had packed into V’s car and made the hour-long trek after work, so we quickly ponied up to the bar for some relaxers. As we chatted amongst ourselves, Mark helped set up the stage with the rest of his classmates and the place slowly started to fill up with more extras from Roadhouse. And I mean fill the frig up. By the time the first comedian hit the stage, it was standing room only. I even think I briefly saw Jeff Healey carrying Bud Lite up from the basement - although he started loading the bottles into the back of an amplifier.
Mark was the second student, and fourth comedian to go on. Throughout the first three acts, even the professionals, the crowd in the back by the bar would not shut up, and it was hard to hear anything. After Brukkake got up and told a couple of jokes - the place fell silent, and with the exception of a couple bits - including the poop joke I think we all tried to persuede him to drop - he had the ratty clientele of the Double Deuce in the palm of his hand. The most popular bit - I am paraphrasing:
“My girlfriend is great, and as relationships are all about compromise I try to make it a two-way street whenever I can. So when she told me recently she wished we could be more open to experiencing other cultures, I immediately drove to Chinatown and picked up two Brazilian whooores for us to have a gangbang with (many laughs). Then, she said she’d always wanted to go to Mexico. So again, I compromised, and took her to Lawrence.”
Frankly, I couldn’t believe it. Brunelli might have a future at this sort of thing. You can’t learn charisma or stage presence - you have it or you don’t. He gots it.
Brukkake, after recently taking a short course on the artform, has his stand up comedy debut tonight at a club in Haverill. As Mark and I have had many stand-up adventures together - The last episode taping of Tough Crowd, Mr. Show at the Orpheum, Brian Regan and Colin Quinn shows at the Comedy Connection - I’m going to be there in full support. I only wish I had the balls to do it myself!
I’ll be bringing my camera and taking some photos so those of you who know him can have a look at this milestone/trainwreck for yourselves. My ride awaits - I really must put some pants on and get up to Hanover Street to his girlfriend’s, although that’s usually what I do right before I leave there. YOWSERS - feel free to use that one tonight, buddy. Break a fucking leg!
A recipie for trouble if I’ve ever heard one: Tiernan’s now has a lightning-fast, free wireless connection. My apartment was party-central for some reason Monday night, with both my roomates independantly entertaining for a combined atmosphere that resembled the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse that time it was invaded by monkeys. Needless to say, even locked away in my room like a sober veal - I got very little done. I had a deadline yesterday, and I needed a quiet place to work after-hours and so I decided to see if I really could get shit done at my favorite pub - because I was never able to when I tried at the Hind’s Head upon the procurement of my very first laptop in 1998.
Some boneless Buffalo wings and a couple Diet Cokes later, I was well on my way to getting my work finished. By midnight I was all done and having a Smithwick’s with the North End restaurant crew that goes there every night. So, all in all, a nice little productive evening. I think Tiernan’s may become a library of sorts for me. Especially during the week when it’s quiet. Anyway, the real point here is that I got an important phone call while I was sitting there, typing away.
It was Jim on the line, and he sorta sheepishly asked me if I’d be interested in getting a timeshare in Newport this summer. Perhaps he was under the impression that I enjoyed sweating profusely in dense urban settings and didn’t want to impose. Normally when we all go down there, we’re treated like royalty at Heather and Chris’ awesome house. But they have a little sailor on the way, and things done changed this year. I didn’t even think about my answer. I’m in, and I’ll be spending as little time in Boston as possible over the next 4 months. Perhaps that will cure my geographic antsiness for awhile. But definitely not the aggressive alcohol dependency.
We’ve been at this for awhile now, eh? Get your updated weights in pronto, porkies. When your name is bolded, you’re officially corpulent and current. The sun is out in Boston today, and the beach is beginning to beckon. So stay on target and don’t lose the porky plot here, people.
- Monster >> Current: 268 / Last Week - 265 / Target 255 / Gained 3 - Smash >> Current: 138 / Last Week - 138 / Target 129 / Lost 0 - Pyeman >> Current: 224 / Last Week - 226 / Target 210 / Lost 2 - DVS >> Current 246 / Last Week - 246 / Target 210 / Lost 0 - Aubz >> Current: 133 / Last Week - 134 /Target 125 / Lost 1 - BDoyle >> Current: 188 - / Last Week - 188 / Target 175 / Lost 0 - Piglet >>> Current: 145 / Last Week - 145 / Target 135 / Lost 0 - Not Lance >>> Current: 168 / Last Week - 171 / Target 161 / Lost 3 - Greg >> Current: 183 / Last Week - 187 / Target 170 / Lost 4 - Venditti >> Current: 230 / Last Week - 232 / Target 219 / Lost 2 - Ka-Rista >> Current: 158 / Last Week - 158 / Target 140 / Lost 0
Greg is doing really well, as Ray Borque is working him to death. Doyle has hit an impasse, and Monster may be a lost cause. Stay tuned throughout the day as more results seep in like Crisco in the sun. Yes, it’s officially closing in on Summer when I see the Lemonade Lady for the first time. She’s like Puxatawney Phil, only with a bucket of lukewarm Crystal Light.
And what to my wondrous eyes just appeared? But a beam of sunshine through my office window, dear. If I had my camera here, I’d snap it for you - as it’s quite glorious. The first sun Boston has had in 8 days. I can’t remember a rainy stretch like this, and I’m glad to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m not actually a schizophrenic whaler from Blackpool.
The sun has a downside, however, and that is that our beloved homeless population will be back out in full force come dryness. But I have procured a new anti-homeless device I’d like to readily endorse and encourage you all to use to your benefit in this beleagured city. It doesn’t actually harm them, and it’s great for the bleeding hearts because afterwards you’d even be able to release them back into the wild if they weren’t there already.
It’s called an iPod, and it’s effectiveness is staggering. Whenever a ‘lost soul’ lurches into my path and demands money, I simply point innocently at my headphones and say - “Sorry Sir, but I’m listening to Strangeways Here We Come at this point in time and can’t really engage you at the moment. Did you want to discuss French drama? Perhaps invite me to a spring fête? You know, you look like a bit of a trainspotter. It’s a real tragedy I’ll never know the reason for your advance because I simply can’t hear you at this juncture.”
Once the industrious Mr. Whiskers found another way into Mommy and Daddy’s room on Saturday nights - what he saw would scar him for his remaining 8 lives.
I’ve finally managed to convince my sister to upload the whack of photos she’s collected from Beatrice’s, Damaris’ and her very own birthday parties. They’re your standard fare, however those of us currently involved in the pork ass challenge look stunning, the ass flash on the stairs is a very nice touch, and it’s worth the price of admission just to see the many ways in which my father managed to make people feel uncomfortable. Comments are welcome, but simply looking away is definitely encouraged.
Here’s a question for you all - consider it a survey. It serves 2 purposes: 1.) to help get a site I am involved with indexed properly by search engines for a very competitive term. 2.) I am genuinely curious as I have many friends coming to town this summer. So, what is the best way for a fairweather, peripheral fan to procure Red Sox tickets in Boston? Short of whooooring?
