The Deuce Fo’

I’m still an animal! Grrrrrrrrr…

About to head out, but updates to come! This weekend has fucked my sleep schedule, but overall it’s been worth it.

I titled this after the song by Umphrey’s McGee, but I stumbled across this movie poster featuring a YOUNG Kiefer Sutherland. Dzzzzamn that’s a flashy haircut! Anyways… So New York is straight up ca-razy! I am not sure how you NY kids do it, but with that said, I honestly wish I had about a year to go and explore it all, and that probably wouldn’t even be enough.

The above is a very LARGE painting that a friend of mine from long ago created for Isaac Slade of the Fray (Major namedrop there!) But, it really encompasses my general thoughts on my trip. It was big. There is just so much humanity packed in there. I checked out downtown Manhattan (even though the whole thing is “downtown”) a couple days just wandering around solo. I was just impressed with how it all seems to work together… There are about 150million neighborhoods/areas of Manhattan and everyone there seems to know them all and know cool bars/restaurants in particular sections. But the problem is that there are so many cool places I have no idea how you would ever go finding out about them. I’m just kinda rambling now, but there is really so much variety that I could live there for years and never get to experience them all, but that’s part of the joy of it I suppose… Finding a place that you like an identify with and can come back to again and again.

But pish posh enough musing and time to get down to some real details. So what happened!?

Cask Festival – A Brooklyn bar held is annual (?) cask festival where they crack into casks (mini kegs) of small batch brews. It’s as fresh as it gets and overall delicious! I have been on kinda an IPA kick lately and I was pleasantly surprised with the quality and variety that were offered. We got a little drunko there, met up with a good crew of people and had a very entertaining walk back to my buddy’s place, including a brief late night chat with a thickly accented Long Islander.

Beefsteak¹- The next day was the event that we had all been waiting for. The Brooklyn Beefsteak. This is held in a local bar/venue and is an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink, no-utensils-allowed, beefstravaganza! There was also a really sweet three piece old time band (think Soggy Bottom Boys) that really brought the whole thing together.

Apron donned and seated at long tables, I wasn’t sure what exactly would happen but after the free beer got flowing we were soon greeted by large platters of these:

A single piece of sliced beef tenderloin placed upon a small slice of bread. The platters would show up and we would each grab a few slices of bread with the meat on it and devour them quickly awaiting the next one. There was a couple at the end of our table asked for all of the scraps of bread that were left from the platters and started hoarding them, more on this later… The band played and led us in a song about the unfettered gluttony of the event, which got everyone riled up and ready to eat more beef and pound more beers! Then beefsteak enthusiast, page 2 columnist for ESPN, and our host for the evening this guy²:

He ended up speaking in front of the crowd and telling some history about beefsteaks. The most interesting thing that came out of the talk was the fact that in a “real” beefsteak, no one eats the bread, because that would just take up too much room that could be used for beef! And so people would stack the bread into elaborate towers. This is what the couple at the end of our table had been plotting all along. This changed the entire vibe of the event. People started going huge with these:

We filled up and eventually things devolved into a semi drunken mess/minor food fight and we all had to head out. But wow, what an experience!

Rock  Climbing – There is a really sweet rock climbing place called Brooklyn Boulders made out of a converted warehouse that a few of my friends climb at regularly. It’s a pretty sweet set up that they have with a lot of room for bouldering and many different routes (indicated by the different colored tape on each handhold) and a replica of the Brooklyn Bridge that you can climb inside of and around up to the top. 

Although I’ve been hitting the gym and trying to get into shape this one really kicked my ass. It’s a lot about the finger muscles (wtf?) and despite nerding out in front of computers a ton and years worth of video game experience, my fingers are girly-man fingers when it comes to hoisting my body up. But it was a lot of fun to go out and try it. I have a few friends that climb and I really need to start going with them. Also, nbd… but while we were there Jude Law came in and was doing some bouldering (whoops more name dropping). These things just happen I guess…

I spent the rest of my time wandering around, taking in Manhattan, meeting up with friends that live there³, convincing my friends working there to come out for lunch beers, and taking in the giant organism that is NYC. I managed to only duff a few subway stops and by the time I was done, I think I had it pretty much down. I’m going to have to make sure that I take some time to spend out there again…

I left NYC to head up to meet my friends in Tarrytown and get ready for the actual reason for my trip. PSK Formal. Typified by excessive drinking, dancing, frolicking, philandering, and debauchery… this one delivered on a good number of these.  However, it was lacking a strong alumni presence. So given the circumstances, we made a run at it and did the best we could. There was some issues with the bussing that ended up kinda killing the whole vibe of what formal is all about, and ended up cutting the dancing short (gasp!). Small hitches aside, I actually had an absolute blast and was glad that it turned out as well as it did. I love you all and want to thank you for pulling it together⁴. Spring should be even better, a TON of people coming back, a siiiiick house (hoping, praying), new members, and a giant step forward into PSK’s future. I’m already ready already! ⁵

One last parting thought. I typically find a lot of wisdom/funny stuff on bathroom walls. Kinda like pre-internet message boards, bathroom walls have always served as a medium for expressing truisms, funny sayings, random phone numbers, racist diatribes, and movie critiques⁶. But, occasionally I find some that either make me laugh, confuse the hell out of me, or just flat out impress me, and I usually snap a pic of them. This was one that I really liked:

Poetic… Thanks RSC, you deliver in ways that you don’t even know.

-J

I’m glad that life doesn’t fall into ruts as often as it used to. 2-3 weeks ago, things were much different than they are right now–I feel like I’m in a completely different place. I like it.

Things are exciting, there is holiday spirit in the air. Not the Gregg Easterbrook Christmas Creep kind, but just that time of year where you start to catch wiffs of spiced drinks, see pumpkins and other assorted squashes everywhere, there’s snow but not much, the leaves are blowing in the wind, and the fall is officially in full swing. What’s that really all mean? It means a bunch of holiday get togethers, cider, pumpkin pie, turkey, ugly sweaters (of which I own none, of course all my sweaters are very fashionable), hot chocolate, fireplace fires, and all that good shit.

About a month ago or so, my buddy Sonny dropped some serious life knowledge on me. It amounted to a lot of things, but a very tangible one of them came in the form of this book:

Built For Show by Nate Green. It has some minor pick-up stuff in it, but above all else it gets rid of a lot of the bullshit that comes with fitness. It is a pretty simple system to get your (in this case my) lazy, desk sitting, computer eyed, sack of shit, lame ass up and into the gym getting a body that you can flaunt. Good humor and shit talking make it an easy read and I actually read the entire thing which for anyone that knows me or reads this, finishing a book is a MAJOR accomplishment. So I’ve been hitting up the gym regularly and am about halfway through the first section of the year round work out schedule. I’m eating better and more. I glance in the mirror and think to myself “DZAMN SON!” Get on it.

I’ve been working on the rest of the stuff that we talked about and it is getting there. I find myself going through these phases where I really get into an area of my life, and neglect others. Just wrote “but I’m done with that now,” but what I mean is that I’m through just letting it happen. It’s just like tilt, it’s not something that you can eliminate all at once (or maybe ever) but you can get better at limiting it’s effects. So here we go time to start firing on all cylinders… There’s only so much time that we get to do the things that are important to us.

That means that this bad boy is going to get more attention. I was again reminded today of the benefits of short and sweet write ups, but I owe something significant or at least to put a lot of pics and vids in here so that it looks like I put in some effort. But future efforts are allowed to be a digestible size.

Books:

Excited to read his work since wrapping up an impressive IV. BUT! I haven’t opened it yet as there are many other books that I need to get through. I did hear him on the B.S. Report with Bill Simmons talking about the book, the process of writing, more pop culture, the whole bit. I hope to get to this one before 2010, but… I have to get through this beast:

Written by the aforementioned Bill Simmons. Clocking in at over 700 pages, thick enough to stop a bullet from a 9mm, I have gotten through the first 50 pages and I love it. I’ve read his baseball book, I love it and most all his columns and listen to his podcasts, despite his undying boner for the Red Sox, the Pats, and everything Boston. He just knows how to be a fan, and it really comes through in his writing. He also throws in enough gambling to make it degen enough and exciting enough. He throws in enough “what are the odds that ___” or “God I wish I could parlay (event X) with (not completely unrelated, but close, event Y)!” I’m excited to devour this.

The Redux. Plan on nerding out fairly hardcore on this one as I love the economics that these guys elect to tackle. The first book was a bestselling eye-opener into “behavioral” economics. Quotes are used because that term gets tossed around a lot and people aren’t really sure what it actually covers or doesn’t. People make irrational choices, but why?  Something along those lines… Their blog at http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/ provides some good, bite-sized versions of what they delve into and is a good Reader addition, even if you only find 1 in 10 to be actually interesting.

I’ve started up a few other books in the meantime and have barely managed to get through any that I start. Fortunately, I don’t know of any other books coming out in the immediate future, so time to get some work done on these and the rest of my disgustingly large stack on the night stand.

The fall is tough though, as football season hits full stride, basketball picks up as well and my boys! are off to a roaring start.

Playing with a sense of urgency! RAWR! That’s what I like to see! A month or so in, we’ll see if they still have the same fire, but Melo looks like a man possessed out there. They got a taste last season and they are coming for it this year. Hard.

And fall also means… Formal. It’s trip time and this year I’m going to take a quick stop to see some friends in NYC next week beforehand. Not sure  what all is going to go on, but I’ve never spent any serious amount of time in the city despite it being “in my backyard” when I was in Troy. That like many other things these days, is changing. We are starting things off with an interesting event on Sunday, The Brooklyn Beefsteak. An all you can eat and drink bonanza, with a small catch. No utensils are allowed. Looks like we’re going to be going caveman on this…

So all week there, the back up to Troytown for a long weekend of debauchery and hopefully I escape without the swine flu.  Updates to follow.

With that said, I am certainly in an…

-J

P.S. Blueprint 3 is siiiiiiiiick!

P.P.S. If you read this in Reader, try to check it out at the actual site, I’m going to start changing the title picture (currently a sunset over the mountains that I took in the San Luis Valley) to incorporate more of my pics. I see a ton of gems as they cruise through my slideshow screensaver. Might as well share…

Link to the super sick video

“These are strictly for my own selfish pleasure so I’m going to hold back on reading them until I can crank through some of this backlog, which is ironically composed 100% of books that I really want to read.”

These words are not even 48 hours old and I’ve already cheated.

250 pages yesterday I will probably knock the last 250ish out tonight and tomorrow.
DAMN YOU DAN BROWN!

Some of us had semi-important things to do tonight such as other reading, that painting, running, session, all of which was going to have to be worked around trivia at Andrew’s (although this might not come together this week) and the return of the Fall lineup for the major networks.
3 premieres tonight

Fringe. Office. Sunny.

Bling. Blang. Blaow.

Oh wow.

Let’s take a step back here…

Phi Denver was a roaring success. It was a glorious combination of fun, debautchery, drunkeness, and somehow there was even some football in there. I cannot wait until next year’s draft, wherever it may be… Chicago? Delaware? Jamaica?

The days following Phi Denver have been filled with random craziness from all sides. It’s been somewhat hectic and running pretty loose. I might need to add a little more structure to the way that things are going because I’ve been slacking on some of my goals. At the same time I’m having a ton of fun with it all, but the key is a little more balance.

Anyways, after an eventful Friday night around the neighborhood, we headed down to Wash Park for my friend’s birthday Saturday afternoon. It ended up being kinda crappy weather, but a couple of kegs and a ton of friends helped out with that. We had some great kickball/volleyball going on, and they even managed to get my bday friend a piñata for her to smash which was absolutely hilarious and I think that we might need to incorporate more of these into everyday life. We eneded up bringing the keg and the party back to our house when the rain started to pick up, and I honestly couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. We hung out played some games, had some scotch, enjoyed some quality beers and overall had such a blast with some really good friends that I haven’t gotten to see in a while. The Wash Park party was also in part for my buddy Sidley was in town again after a year or so of galavanting across Central and South America with his beautiful girlfriend. He is a special individual that I am very privledged to consider a close friend. He is just one of those rare quality people that are a true pleasure and bring joy to everyone that he meets.

I got to speak about this topic with my friend/mentor Sonny. We had a great conversation about value, validation, social proof, and a bunch of other things. It really helped me start to look at interactions differently and more clearly. We talked about not deriving value externally. Typically,  social value is derived externally through some form of supplication (like me, like me, like me, type qualifying statements), combativeness (I’ll fight you!), or competitiveness (One Uppingness, if you will). However all of these are still externally located. I am finding that there are better ways to go about things than through one of these avenues, but I need to work that out and start really generating and distributing more value internally. I haven’t really gotten far enough outside of myself yet, but I’m working on it. Instead of remaining focused on one’s self, start being truly and genuinely concerned for other people, even complete strangers. Starting today (when I finally manage to get this finished up), it’s time to go out with the attitude that I should really look to make someone’s day.

Relating it all back, that’s one of the things that Sidley always naturally did so well. Congratulations man, we’re all that much better because of it.

Also, in lighter news, I stumbled across a great new (as in new to me but was right under my nose the entire time) comedian. He plays the landlord in Flight of the Conchords, Eugene Mirman. Somewhat like “Dave” aka Arj Barker, he is a solid comedian in his own right but he deosn’t really get to demostrate it on the show. Here are a few pretty money shorts:

From one of his stand up spots

Art – I’m going to need to get in there and finish this awesome piece that I’ve been working on for a bit. It’s going to end up looking something like this:

Hopefully I get that finished this week. I’m pretty stoked on how it’s turning out. Just a few more touch ups and filling in a few more coats on the yellow and a few spots of the darker red.

Books- Son of a bitch. I think that it’s about a 3:1 in to out ratio on reading these things. Time just seems to disappear. I did just order a book that I really want to read and two more that will be released in October. These are strictly for my own selfish pleasure so I’m going to hold back on reading them until I can crank through some of this backlog, which is ironically composed 100% of books that I really want to read. Ugghhhhh…

Next time: Continued culinary adventures!

-J

I’m putting this here to force myself to write some stuff tomorrow.

But, off to Wash Park til then….

-edit: Got a lot in, but I need to finish up some more work on it. Tomorrow.

Lunch date

>Bankwire

>ATM

>Tittays

Summer, you are a silly lass. Looks like you are slowly trying to run out of my life until next year, but I refuse to let that happen without some further excitement!

So let’s see what’s left on the plate?!

This weekend: Crawl for Cancer. I did this last year and it was siiiiiiick. All day team drinking, add in some games, some beautiful girls, an afterparty!, it ends up in complete madness plus helps a cause!

Sunday, the premiere of 2 Months 2 Million, Watch it. Tell your friends to watch it. Even if you don’t know anything about poker, it is going to be a sweet show. Set the DVR.

Then next weekend brings in Phi Denver. To explain, a bunch of my older buddies have a fantasy football league that they have had the past couple years that evolved above and beyond the traditional league that the house always had. This year a spot opened up and there was a grueling competition for the spot and in the end there was a tie between me and my good buddy. So instead of pushing the competition to potentially life threatening levels, we agreed to split it. Either way, this is a league that you WANT to be in, so I’m glad to be.

The draft is next weekend, and unlike your average league’s draft, this is bringing people from across the US to join us in Denver where there is a full Thursday-Sunday planned with hiking, golf, brewery tour, Rockies game, gratuitous amounts of debauchery, and maybe even some time for the draft. It’s going to be a ridiculous mess and I love it. They are changing to auction style this year, which after a bit of research, seems to completely blow snake drafting out of the water. Got me so pumped for it! BEAST MODE!

After that blows through town I need to get ready for the beginnings of fall and my big trip…. So that’s what’s on the plate for now.

Other things:

Mad Men: Badass. New season starts this week and I’m almost caught up.

True Blood: Pretty Badass. Started off really weird but I got hooked pretty quickly. It’s not really fair that Eric in this show is 8 million times cooler than Eric in Entourage.

Entourage: E’s pussyfooting aside, not bad. Ari is keeping it alive ¹ and so I’m still watching it, but they need to really have a couple breakout eps to turn this around.

Rockies: Badass. Tulo put on a CLINIC ² last night. Might be going to the game tonight, still undecided. Sweet Helton article.

Need to run more. Cooking is awesome, trying a ton of new things, having ridiculous success, and enjoying every minute of it. Need to read more. I finished a couple books including Outliers and am rereading an old book The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat. Starting new books left and right, finishing a couple here and there, but as usual, losing that battle. I guess that’s half the fun…

Later,

-J

As I continue to ramble about the gloriousness that is cast iron…

Life updates coming soon? Yeah probably…