Ode to Jack La Lane, and Grandfather Ball

What an inspirational man Jack La Lane was. He got thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of bon-bon munching, depressed, fat-ass housewives off said fat-asses, and got them up and moving, getting in shape and motivating them to make a better pot roast for their husbands to come home to. Of course this was back in the '50's and 60's before women had jobs, or the vote, or the vim and vigor to get out there and earn 70% of what a man makes in the working world. But by God, they did it, and a few years later they got the women's liberation movement, and Gloria Stienem helped them make a big stink about every little thing, and now we're all finally equal. All due to Jack La Lane, a man, and his in home exercise system to get the ladies moving.
     But I don't want to talk about the ladies, I want to talk about exercising, and getting my fat-ass in shape so I don't end up a feeble, brain addled nincompoop, if and when I get to be an old man. If I have to get old and fall apart, I'd like it to be a little less painful than if I was 80 Lbs. overweight with onset diabetes, emphysema and cirrhosis of the liver, 'cause that's what I was lookin' forward to the way I was livin' my life. Of course livin' like that, I would have been assured not to make it to any ripe old age. Now at least I've got the chance, and I'll take it if I can. I've had my wake up call, (a.k.a.,second chance) luckily, and now it's time to make good on it.
     This coming weekend I'll be doing my fitness assessment with a personal trainer down at the gym. He'll get me set up on a plan to work away the pounds of flesh that I've accumulated lo these many years, and especially these last few months since I quit smoking. I know it's going to be rough, but I feel I've already laid a pretty good foundation so far this past month. I've got a good routine going so far, and have even upped my speed walking to actual jogging. I've been sweating profusely. It feels good, but I just haven't seen any real results as of yet. I think I'm just keeping the weight gain at bay, not actually dropping the pounds yet. So I'm looking forward to getting a plan in place and stepping up the workout to a whole...new....level. That will be for the running and the cornucopia of machines that are offered up at the gym. When it comes to swimming, I don't think those trainers know their breast-stroke from a hole in the ground,(that's what she said), but that's ok, I swam in high school, so I think I can figure that one out. It's been going quite well so far. Swimmingly you might say. HA!  I'm at about 1400 yards per workout after one month. Not too bad, but I do know how to swim correctly. Swim correctly you ask? Yes indeed, swim correctly.
     There is a technique to swimming in an efficient manner that will get you through the water with an acceptable amount of effort, and yield you a great amount of physical good. It's still a bit of work, but it wouldn't be exercise if there wasn't now would there? You don't want to stay fat and lazy forever do you? I'm not going to go through all the minutia of movements to a good freestyle stroke, but I will give you the basics to get you started. First you need a bathing suit, something form fitting that will reduce the amount of drag as you move through the water. I myself use a standard Speedo that you see the Olympic swimmers wearing like that dope smokin' Phelps kid that won all the gold medals, even more than Mark Spitz. I believe that when you're working on getting in shape, vanity has no place in the conversation. I might look a little funny, but that's ok 'cause I'm there to work. Let it all hang out baby. Next a pair of goggles will do you a world of good. Not only do they keep the water out of your eyes, but you can see quite well under water which keeps you on the right track, and occasionally lets you peer at the ladies in the other lanes surreptitiously as you're moving along. Not that I would do that mind you. Now, that's all that I use when it comes to equipment. Some folks like to use the form fitting wax like earplugs, or the nose-plugs to keep the water out. That is, if you're a pussy. Nothin' like a little snort of pool water up the nose to let you know you're alive, and build some much needed character I say. This country, and this current generation is entirely too coddled when it comes to inconvenience and making an effort to succeed  in my humble opinion. But then again, what do I know? Swim caps are only acceptable if you have long hair, so chicks and long haired dudes may use them. If you've got short hair, and you're using a swim cap, then yer a fag. No I don't mean a gay fag, I just mean a fag as in, "What a fag.", or when you look at the guy at work that kisses way too much ass, then you're a fag. It has nothing to do with your sexual orientation.
      Since I've been swimming at the gym for the past month, I've seen some pretty interesting accessories that people are using to reach their full potential. For example: various sizes of flippers from two inches past the toes all the way up to scuba size monsters that look like they weigh a whole lot more than I'm willing to strap on to my twinklin' little toes. No sir. (I said "strap-on"!)  Then you've got the scuba mask, webbed gloves and of course the snorkel for our short-breathed friends, all adding to the drag of the swimmer. I don't want it to be any harder than it has to be. Swimming isn't hard in the sense of the technical movement through the water, it's just the constant-ness and sense of plodding along, working so hard to keep it moving that is the drag. Breathing differently, suckin' down gulps of pool water, reaching further, kicking harder, pushing, pushing. Slappin' something else on my body to slow me down intentionally is not what I'm lookin' for. I'm like a naked dolphin, sliding through the waves. That's a pretty faggy thing to say. I get flashbacks of high school swim practice with coach Parsons overseeing our nautical progress, guiding our aquatic acumen from his poolside small fold out table with practice schedules and other swim related literature. He was a quiet, short and bald man with hair on the sides and back,(what do you call that?), sporting a full mustache, wearing the requisite coaches polyester gym shorts and usually a white polo shirt, doling out his brand of small town folksy wisdom and common sense to the young men that were called "Lakers".  
     It's been a couple of days since I last wrote on here, so I have now had the fitness assessment, and the guy picked out a basic workout for me on a host of weight machines. I've got a file with my workout sheet that I follow until I'm comfortable, then find another machine to add to or replace with the program. I'm not used to lifting weights though. It's a whole new experience, and discipline for me. Mind you I'm not going for the muscle bound lifestyle in any sense. That just ain't my thing. I just want to have enough muscle power to play the things that I like to play. A little stamina wouldn't hurt as well. Not that I have a problem with stamina, I'm not saying that at all. But compared to the 25 year old me, I wear out faster than I used to. Such is life.    
     There you have it for this edition, don't forget to brush your teeth, and pay your bills on time. Speaking of which, nothing of import to report on that front. Working on it, is the official statement at this time.
  

"Drag me towards that new technology, and pry my cold dead fingers off my turntable, would you son?"

I just bought a new cell phone this week. It's quite a dandy. It's not a "smart" phone, but pretty intelligent nonetheless. It's an LG Octane. OK, first of all, the name of the company is LG, which stands for "Life's Good". That's right, Life's Good. When did we start naming our companies like this? I'm guessing it started when online companies like Yahoo and Google got big and made so much money it didn't matter what a company called itself. But those are internet companies. The internet is new and funky and exciting and weird. It's supposed to have strange sounding company names. But a phone company? It just doesn't seem right. I grew up in the monopolized world of Bell Telephone, and International Business Machines, back when a business's name meant something by God. It told you who they were, and sometimes what they did. None of this feel good, hippy-drippy, let's all be friends and get along nonsense. NO! This is business. Let's all be sensible then shall we. We've got money to make. Bottom lines to draw, and ledgers to balance. We have no time for your happy names, your silly monikers.
      But that's the way it is, like it or not. The only constant is change. Roll with the flow or get run over. I've decided to roll with it myself. I got my first cell phone only about 3 1/2 years ago. Just a phone, no internet applications or mp3 player or movie player. It worked well enough. I've kept up with the national trend of getting a new phone about every 18 months or so. One phone I had to get because I dropped the old one in the tub with my kids. Because my credit is so shitty, I couldn't really enter into a contract with a phone company again, so I ended up buying one of those pay as you go phones that you can pick up at Wal-Mart. It worked well, but I knew that I was paying an exorbitant amount on it. I didn't know exactly how much until the last couple of months since I've been tracking my spending and keeping a budget on a website called Mint.com. It's pretty kick-ass. Here's a link if you want to check it out:https://www.mint.com/. It lets you make a budget with just about any topic you can think of, you keep track of your bank accounts and credit cards, savings and investments. It links up with all of your money institutions and gets your info to organize, and put it in order for you. You can set financial goals, track all of your spending and split your expenditures as well if need be. You can also look at your spending trends as well. I'm really diggin' it. I digress. So......since I saw that I was spending way too much on my little phone, I decided it was time to find a new one that cut down dramatically on my monthly bill, and I thought I might just be able to enter a contract with a major carrier now that I had a couple of years of paying my bills on a mostly timely manner.  I ended up going with Verizon for a couple of reasons: for one, I get a 22% discount on it through my work, and two, I'm pretty sure I still owe AT&T $150 or so. Not much of a choice at all really. I was all hopped up at first to get the smart phone, but when I found out what my ex pays for her non-smart phone, and that you can't get one without internet, I decided on something a little less flashy, and less costly. It's still a helluva lot more than what I was using though. It's got a great camera, which I really wanted, and which also can record video. You can download all kinds of music onto it too, which I'm doing as I write. Only about 10 songs on the phones internal memory, but you can get as much memory as you want with a removable memory card, which is about the size, and thickness, of my thumbnail. It's all so very exciting. I ended up buying the memory card today, then went to the library to borrow as many CD's as I could, and am ripping them to my computer so that I may then copy them to the card to put into my phone. I'm like a kid in a candy store! Great, now the music companies will be after me for stealing their music from the library. You just can't catch a break around here. Sheesh!
     Texting is not my forte, but now that I have a phone that makes it grammatically easier, I am much more open to the idea of it. I flip the phone open lengthwise, and it's got a full sized keyboard with all the punctuations, a space bar and the number keys up top. Then it's got a screen and speakers on the inside as well, so I can listen to an album, or a podcast while I'm texting away. Or maybe not, I haven't actually tried doing both yet. But it still kicks ass!
     Technology is a great confusing tool that takes me a little time to get used to, but once I do, it's a piece of cake. How did we ever live our lives without cell phones? How could we survive without constantly being in touch?  What was wrong with us? I'm sure my children will ask me that someday. I just hope I can raise them so that they don't feel dependent on technology for their every need and whim. They just need to get their asses out of the barco lounger and get outside.
     That's all for now. Kinda tame I admit, but I'm just not feeling that controversial right now. It'll come  back. Remember to pay your bills on time, and  brush your teeth.