Blood And Thunder

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
2004: Probably a number of things. None stand out.
2005: Quite a bit, which was a nice change of pace. I became an uncle, quit a job with a plan in place, moved to another state, part-time, stopped working for pay, started working harder for free, began to seriously contemplate buying a house, was a groomsman thrice, went to a wedding where chicks made out on-demand, started an actual real genuine exercise program, organized the fabulously successful Adult Ditch Day, and adapted to life in a small Caribbean town. Oh, and I saw “Old School”.
2006: Officiated at a wedding, kept a workout log, slept on an inflatabed, threw up so hard I got a nosebleed, and was adopted by a cat.
2007: Ran two miles all at once, finally got a summer off of going to Maine, won an imaginary World Series, and for the first time saw the band of my childhood live.
2008: Ran a 5K, ran an 8K, worked as a “manny”, got laid off, remained on staff as a volunteer, lost a boatload of weight, received unexpected family support that touched me to the core, started both a novel and a memoir, swam a mile, saw the Batman movie of my dreams, and bought a cat a Christmas present.

2009: Visited Seattle, got a friend back from the dead, returned from the dead as far as a bunch of other people were concerned, attended six weddings, received money in exchange for writing jokes, was nearly murdered by a raft, was invited to audition for the Onion’s freelance roster (jury’s still out), and got my fastball back in the womb of the desert sun.

 

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
2004: I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. Too depressing.
2005: I don’t make formal resolutions, but I accomplished pretty much everything I wanted to this year.
2006: I made none. It’s time to start. This time next year, I will not be:
*Unable to run a couple of miles (Nailed)
*Being mocked by the unfinished project on my desktop (Failed)
*Without an apartment in Chicago (Nailed)
*Swearing to resuscitate this blog (Nailed)
*Bitching about unsuccessful weight loss (Incomplete – I mostly stopped bitching, but not for the reason I wanted.)
2007: 3.5 of 5 for 2007. For 2008, let’s roll over the two I missed:
* No more bitching about unsuccessful weight loss because I have dropped enough.
* No more having the beginnings of a book sitting on my desktop laughing at me.
And add:
* Take one genuine Friday-at-three-to-a-week-from-Monday-at-nine vacation like a normal person.
* Make significant progress toward home ownership.
* Ten consecutive chin-ups
* With regard to #31, this year I will do something memorable on my birthday.
2008: You be the judge. I have finally lost a mess of weight. I now have the beginnings of three books sitting laughing at me. We did not get the vacation. The “significant progress toward home ownership” was to decide to probably wait at least three more years to buy. I can do six and a half consecutive chin-ups, but I can do four more pretty quickly thereafter, and in this one case I think the goal may have been ambitious. And on my birthday I was rerouted to somewhere kid-friendly for breakfast, took a Segway tour, and saw a new Indiana Jones movie. A lot of grey area there, no?
Only two for ‘09:
I will finish writing at least one book this year.
I will complete, and then maintain, this weight loss.

2009: One for two last year.   But I get a book mulligan, because the other writing job came up.  For this year, I would like to:

* Hit two hundred pounds, just once, to see if I can.
* Really get career number three, “Writer”, launched.
* Run ten miles.
* Complete a trithlon.
* The fastball is not enough.     I am no seventh inning setup man.  I am a closer.  I need more than my fastball.  I need the swagger back, too.  I vow this year a complete return to being that arrogant, preening, competely unstoppable shutdown stopper everybody loved to hate.

 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
2004: No, but I am stoked to be an uncle in 2005.
2005: My world is four little girls nicer than it was this time last year.
2006: No. I think, though 2007 is shaping up to be a doozie. (The count presently stands at four.)
2007: My world is four little boys and one little girl nicer this year. (Unless I miscounted.)
2008: I think this was a pretty lean year for babies, just one. Three already on the runway for Q1 of ‘09, though.

2009: Two little girls and two little boys nicer.  And a girl and a boy and a surprise already chambered for 2010. 

 

4. Did anyone close to you die?
2004: Nope.
2005: No. I got a bunch of those out of the way young. But I’m still riding a hot streak. Don’t be the one to fuck it up.
2006: The streak continues, and might be moving into a phase of “too quiet” ominousness.
2007: Still lucky.
2008: No, though it was close. Next year please let this list name only the one who’s hanging in there right now.

2009: Yes.  Let’s move on. 

 

5. What would you like to have in the coming year that you lacked in the previous year?
2004: A job I don’t hate and Teri Hatcher naked in a hotel room at my convenience.
2005: An Aston-Martin, a minicopter, six or eight torrid affairs, a really good tux, and a trail of dead men in my wake.
2006: An apartment in Chicago, a predictable minimum monthly income, barbecues, and a leaf-blower and toilet-paper cannon like the Kid Scientists did on Letterman last Friday.
2007: 2007 was a pretty good year. I’m not sure I can think of anything. I wouldn’t mind doing most of it again.
2008: Direction and a little faith in my own ability. Just a little. Not much. Just enough.

2009: Got both.   Now I want a lot of faith in my own ability.  And more direction.  And a better job.  And I want a nicer year for Luna. 

 

6. What countries did you visit?
2004: Vegas is a world tour, at this point — why waste time on a passport?
2005: Canada. I had a nice time.
2006: Saw a real whole lot of Florida.
2007: Little Havana
2008: France, Italy, Morocco, Egypt, India….ah, Las Vegas, you save me so much time and trouble.

2009: I hate this question, so I’m hijacking it and converting it to “Where did you go that you’ve never been?” and the answer to that one is Seattle.  Mazel tov, Barb and Jon.  I enjoyed your city.  Matt and Lisa, I enjoyed your children, company, and restaurant.

 

7. What date from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why:
2004: May 22. It’s my birthday.
2005: 9/8/05 will for me forever be Independence Day.
2006: December 19th, the day the last rope was cut from the safety net. It is amazingly liberating and amazingly terrifying to have no fallback position.
2007: 11/4. I got a nephew.
2008: The first couple weeks of October are a memorable blur.

2009: April 23rd, the day I broke through on the gag-writing.

 
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
2004: Not snapping at the office and going on a killing spree, and getting 75% of the way through Operation Eighty Pounds.
2005: Assembling the courage, financing, will, and opportunity to take a shot at the brass ring. Which I don’t have yet, but at least I’m reaching for it.
2006: I embarrassed no one at the wedding I officiated, including myself; and, to close the year, we operated in the black for nine consecutive pay periods. And I’ve finally quit smoking.
2007: I can run two miles. In a row. Without stopping. Or vomiting.
2008: Lost more than fifty pounds. And can run six miles. And can take pride in neither without instant backsliding, which is, somewhat predictably, causing me some confusion.

2009: I hung onto a job I’m unusually ill-suited to because it provides health insurance, I wrote jokes for a nationally syndicated radio feature, I knocked out a real whole lot of credit card debt, and I got the Onion to respond to my pitch.  Which would you say?

 

9. What was your biggest failure?
2004: Not snapping at the office and going on a tranquility-inducing killing spree, and only getting 75% of the way through Operation Eighty Pounds.
2005: All my failures, this year, seem mild. Not that there weren’t any. But this year was what analysts call an Up Year. Why dwell?
2006: Some of the weight I lost has returned. A task force has been assembled to address the problem.
2007: I am having some trouble with my need to force the entire world into accordance with my sense of order.
2008: I didn’t finish the book I wanted to.

2009: You know, I’m not sure I had a major failure this year.  Just a lot of shaking off the hits and keeping moving forward.   Failure…like the market, I was down far enough in the first quarter that a hundred-point drop during the rally doesn’t seem like much.

 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
2004: Nothing major.
2005: Nothing unusual.
2006: I had the worst flu of my whole life.
2007: Absinthe poisoning
2008: I think maybe — you may have guessed this — a tiny hint of clinical depression may be creeping back into my life.

2009: It was.  But I am better now.  I am even almost good. 

 

11. What was the best thing you bought?
2004: Plane tickets to Florida
2005: This new laptop. I have big plans for you, my pet.
2006: A small business in Florida and an ordination.
2007: A half share of an imaginary major league baseball team. I may have talked to my brother more this year than in the first twenty-eight years I knew him combined.
2008: An entry to run in the PAWS 8K.

2009: Health insurance.  And two nights in a platform tent.  (More on that one later.)

 

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
2004: Mine. But I’m the only one celebrating.
2005: Luna’s. Jeez. You think I had a big year, talk to her. I had an Up Year. She had a Career Year.
2006: Ours.
2007: The Imaginary League Champion California Teabaggers’ Team MVP Hanley Ramirez, Shortstop. 125 runs, 212 hits, 29 homers, 81 RBIs, 51 stolen bases, .332 batting average.
2008: The guys who rebuilt my father’s hip and took twenty years off his age. I will never stop marvelling at this.

2009: All those of you who stuck with me throughout the last quarter of 2008 and the first half of 2009.   I’m not good at positivity.  I’m better at being funny in the face of horrifying unhappiness, and I’m awesome at cold hard command when things are really bad.   Telling people how much I value them, not so much.   Thanks, everybody.

 

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
2004: I’m gonna single out my co-workers and the panic industry.
2005: Everybody’s would if I examined it too closely. So I don’t.
2006: It is amazing how little some people know, or care, about basic human courtesy.
2007: “Appalled and depressed” is a little strong for the internecine Balkanizing that keeps fucking up my social calendar. But it’s not inaccurate.
2008: Mine, maybe. And the financial TV morons.

2009: Everybody who appalled me with disgusting atrocious behavior this year, bless you. I needed it.   Who made me depressed?   I did.   Done now.

 

14. Where did most of your money go?
2004: I wish I knew. No, wait, check that, I’m probably better off wondering.
2005: To moving. Way more than I expected to go there. If there is a flaw in the plan we know as Operation Alligator, it is insufficient funding. This issue should be monitored closely in the coming year.
2006: Debt service.
2007: 100% legitimate unquestionable above-the-line business expenses that can be completely and defensibly written off the taxes.
2008: To running a small business that’s three years old and still alive, an achievement we are not sufficiently pleased by.

2009: See the past three years above.  Not a lot of pocket money this year.

 

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
2004: Fantasy football
2005: Moving to an island. Quitting my job. (Side note: My successor lasted less than ninety days.) Living in Florida in the winter. Some potential new gigs. Being challenged.
2006: My older younger brother’s wedding. My younger younger brother catching up to us, agewise, to a point where we can be brothers instead of weird immature uncles. Fighting, successfully, to keep the business alive.
2007: This hyperambitious Professional Snowbird plan clawing, successfully, for altitude.
2008: Hip surgery and personal fitness. And taking two weeks off of dieting at Christmas.

 

2009: Every time I get a joke on the air, I am delighted.  And every time I don’t, I go into a horrible black hole until I do.  (Sorry honey.  Can’t help it.   Next time don’t marry an arteest.)

 

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
2004: “Already Gone”
2005: God’s Own Drunk: “…and the next thing I knew, I was on I-75 headed for Florida!”
2006: “Gonna Fly Now”
2007: I would love to say it’s something like “Oh Eh Oh Eh” or “Karaoke Queen”, both 2007 discoveries, but I’m afraid it’s “Crank Dat Soulja Boy”.
2008: The songs that get in highest rotation on the jogging path. Off the top of my head, that’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”, “Surrender”, “Panama”, “One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer”, & “Party and Bullshit”.

2009: “Twilight Time”

 

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
2004:
i. happier or sadder? No change.
ii. thinner or fatter? Thinner, but I’m at Pantscon Two after the last month.
iii. richer or poorer? Late surge made it richer, but much of the year was indistinguishable.
2005: Happier, push, poorer
2006: Happier, fatter – Why must I always fill this out right fucking after Christmas? – technically richer.
2007: Happier, push, richer. Three happiers in a row, for those of you looking to buy shares.
2008: Sadder, richer, thinner. Go fucking figure. Maybe I’m just hungry.

2009: Happier, push, push/margin of post-holiday error.

 

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
2004: Travel. Eating. Many other things.
2005: You can never fuck too much, frolic too much, or spend too much time with friends and family. And I wish there had been more Adult Ditch Days.
2006: I need to have more fun.
2007: I wish we had — or made — more time to enjoy the Keys, and less time shooting down bogeys.
2008: Appreciating. And writing. And eating.

2009: Having fun.  And I wish I had more time for family and friends, but with three jobs, one spec project, and trying to stay sorta fit, something had to give.  I miss you people.

 

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
2004: Working. Smoking. (Though I’m down to 3-4 a day.) Rationalizing. Diet-cheating.
2005: I rarely wish I’d done less of anything.
2006: I wish we could have worked less. Which we couldn’t. And had more money. Which we didn’t. And been calmer about the negatives. Which we weren’t. The most accurate answer here is probably “I wish we’d spent less time financially, physically, and emotionally hangin’ by spit.”
2007: Raging.
2008: Feeling like something was terribly wrong without being able to figure out what.

2009: Shower shave eat work eat work write eat run sleep repeat.  (It’s the “repeat” that’s killing me.)

 

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
2004: Christmas went fine.
2005: The way I always do: A fun old-fashioned extended-family Christmas.
2006: I will be celebrating the end of The Year Of Closed Debts.
2007: Christmas was great. As always. I love Christmas.
2008: Cramming treats.

2009: Luxuriating in having the time to see some of you people.

 

There was no #21. Never has been.  Tradition is important.

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
2004: Hundreds and hundreds of times, albeit briefly.
2005: No.
2006: Maybe.
2007: Do you count “With fantasy baseball”?
2008: Not with anyone new.

2009: I almost like myself again.

 

23. How many one-night stands?
2004: I have another item to add to #18.
2005: Not enough. Never enough.
2006: *sigh*
2007: By my calculations, 267.
2008: 267 remains about right.

2009: Probably more like 300-325 this year.   I am in my *prime*.

 

24. What was your favorite TV program?
2004: I try very hard not to miss “PTI”.
2005: Bear games.
2006: I don’t have a TV. I will use this space, instead, to plug Dan LeBatard’s radio show, available online at 790theticket.com. It’s a real pleasure on its own merits, plus it is the closest thing I have found to the glory years of the Mr. Tony show.
2007: Hands down, the Star Wars episode of “Family Guy”.
2008: I still have no TV. But I download the podcast of “Pardon The Interruption” faithfully.

2009: I still like radio more.  Like “The Roe Report”, which you can download from RoeConn.com or from WABC.

 

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
2004: Top of my head, no.
2005: No. Life’s too short.
2006: As I adapt to both a new town and working in financial services, I find that I am learning to hate.
2007: No. Why bother?
2008: Jim Cramer. I hope he dies. And I hope it hurts.

2009: I hated 2009, if you’ll allow me the anthropomorphizing.  I hated 2009, but now it is lying in the desert to die, and a bloody mess I may be, but I am still fucking here.  I win.  I beat you.  Say hello to the buzzards, bitch.  

 

26. What was the best book you read?
2004: Gregg Easterbrook, “The Progress Paradox”.
2005: Jim Harrison’s “The Raw and the Cooked”
2006: “Freakonomics”, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
2007: “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus”
2008: David Schwartz, “The Magic of Thinking Big”. Didn’t work, but there’s still time.

2009: Anne LaMott, “Bird by Bird”.  (Thanks, Eden.)

 

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
2004: Radio Margaritaville.
2005: I discovered that I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed the two Buffett concerts at Wrigley Field.
2006: MP3s and playlists
2007: SIRIUS channel “Backspin”, old-school rap. Which in turn led me to “Party & Bullshit”, which now plays on my phone every time the Notorious R.O.B. checks in.
2008: How much easier running is listening to music instead of podcasts. and the Robbie Hardkiss remix of Duke Ellington’s arrangement of “Jingle Bells”.

2009: The scene in “Almost Famous” where they all sing “Tiny Dancer”.

 

28. What did you want and get?
2004: All year? That’s a lot to remember.
2005: I got most of the things I wanted.
2006: Freedom. Though I believe I asked for it without all the Monkey’s Paw-type consequences, I guess I can live with this version. For now.
2007: An apartment in Chicago and a predictable minimum monthly income.
2008: I wanted to lose weight and get in some kind of shape, and I did.

2009: I wanted to get paid to write jokes for public consumption, and I did.

 

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
2004: I don’t see many movies. I did watch “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back” on Comedy Central and found if fabulously entertaining.
2005: That I saw this year? I go back and forth between “The Punisher” and “Batman Begins”.
2006: “Rocky Balboa”. My favorite film of this year, and the newest addition to the all-time favorite list. Maybe it was just the perfect storm of circumstances and movie and mindset, but I don’t often sit in the theater at the end of movies thinking, “Wow, I wish I could see that again right now,” and I don’t usually get weepy, either. What a great movie.
2007: “The Simpsons Movie”. By default. I saw one movie.
2008: “The Dark Knight”

2009: “The Hangover”

 

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
2004: I don’t recall — not in the way that means I had a great time — and thirty.
2005: I don’t recall — not in the way that means I had a great time — and thirty-one.
2006: Guess.
2007: Ibid. This year, I resolve to do something about that.
2008: Took a Segway tour of Chicago, had a meal with each parent, and saw a new Indiana Jones movie

2009: 35.   Don’t recall celebrating.  It was a Friday night, though, so that might mean it was a good time, instead of shower shave eat work eat work write eat run sleep.  Anybody remember?

 

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
2004: An assurance of immortality.
2005: Walking out of my office the way Silvio Dante walked out of Vesuvio.
2006: One good hurricane and I could’ve bought a house.
2007: Winning the Million-Dollar Slot Pull at Bally’s. Had a pretty strong year otherwise.
2008: I’m not sure I could name just one. Yearlong undiagnosed recession followed by a grand mal seizure of an industry cousin to yours will do that to you.

2009: If 2009 had been easier on Luna.

 

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?
2004: I had to spend a horrendous amount of money on new pants.
2005: Effortless.
2006: “Hi, my weight is fluctuating and redistributing based on fitness regimen and travel eating, and I don’t have a lot of spare cash, so forgive the shorts.”
2007: Refugee, trying.
2008: I’m getting smaller but my clothes aren’t.

2009: “Hey! I might not look terrible in everything!”

 

34. What kept you sane?
2004: Frozen vodka.
2005: Lists.
2006: Xanax. Eventually. Wasn’t a strong Q4 for sanity.
2007: Success.
2008: Sane?

2009: Didn’t have time not to be.

 

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
2004: Does “fancy” mean “lust after”? I’m not really the focused type.
2005: Gold Stars in Celebrity: The Chicago Bears’ defensive starters, Kevin Garnett, Tony Kornheiser, Garry Meier, Scoop Jackson, Jimmy Buffett, Gregg Easterbrook, Jeffrey Steingarten, Rachael Ray, and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
2006: Elliot Spitzer and Carrot Top. Not having a TV or any free time cuts the list down some.
2007: Your 2007 IMAGINARY WORLD CHAMPION CALIFORNIA TEABAGGERS!
2008: Rod Blagojevich.

2009: Charles Barkley.

 

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
2004: The insistence of virtually everyone with a horse in the Presidential race that I needed to spend all my time terrified.
2005: The continued growth of the make-the-event-”prove”-the-existing-opinion school of media coverage-obtainment and political argument.
2006: None. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
2007: None again. A happy dork in the periwinkle, with sunshine on my nose. Finally figured out where I burned out, by the way, when I read the Rorschach chapter of Watchmen, “The Abyss Gazes Also”. Bleak, but very, very helpful. By the way, abyss-gazers, if you look away, you get better eventually.
2008: Interference with the free market’s built-in fear-of-failure safety mechanism.

2009: The focus on providing health insurance to people who do not — for whatever reason — have it, instead of making it affordable to those of us whowould pay for it were it possible but instead endure underemployment to get it.  But this irritation is offset by the majestic job Mr. Obama has done disillusioning the next generation.  I have always had the right kind of eyes to see where the wave finally broke and rolled back.   I am no longer so alone.

 

37. Whom did you miss?
2004: I miss the Old Dog, but not as often or as sharply as I used to.
2005: Virtually everybody who doesn’t live in in Florida.
2006: I am getting the hang of this, but I missed la bella anyway. I think it’s because you people don’t change nearly as rapidly as does my favorite toddler. And I missed barbecues. And in Q4, I missed me.
2007: I saw very much more of everybody this year than I did the last two years, and I am acutely aware and deeply appreciative of that. But I left everything unsupervised for a couple years, and upon my return, I found myself down a biology professor and an anthropologist.
2008: I miss some folks in Key West. (I can’t win.) And I miss the cat when we go to Florida. And I have of late been feeling the absence of a long-gone friend more pointedly than I have been in a while. God, this was a rough year.

2009: You know, thanks to Facebook, texting, fantasy sports, two trips, and a buzzer-beating pizza…nobody.

 

38. Who was the best new person you met?
2004: Ye Gods. Which among you are new to me this year?
2005: This kind of question drives me bugshit with fear that I will omit somebody major, or that I should include those acquaintances who upgraded to friends this year, or that I will in some other way bruise some feelings. I hate doing that. But those of you who are new people in my subset, and those of you who were once here and are now here again, I’m glad.
2006: The woman at Tammy’s Bakery near MIA. Mmmmmmm…eclairs caramello y chorizo empanadas. ¿Como se dice “38-inch waistband”?
2007: My nephew, Mr. J.
2008: Facebook has not brought me many new people, but it has refreshed some old relationships, which is just awesome. A serious bright spot.

2009: This has been a year for rekindling, rewiring, and renewing relationships.  Raised a very old friend from the dead, found a delightful new one somewhere I did not expect, and rebuilt one very big burnt bridge. 

A little deserved detail on the last, because it fits nowhere else: I spent most summers between the age of seven and nineteen at a Y camp in Wisconsin, eventually graduating to staff.  I walked out at the end of August 1993 and didn’t look back for sixteen years.  And it was staggering.   I got a lot of old friends back.  Words, even my words, can’t do it justice.  (Though I tried.)  But you can go home again.

 

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:
2004: “Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.”
2005: “It can be done.”
2006: “It ain’t over til it’s over.”
2007: That I will ruin nice things for myself if I am not careful.
2008: Tempus fugit.

2009: Two bits of philosophy, both things I find oddly hopeful: The first is Camus’ advice to “imagine Sisyphus happy”.  The other is from Waiting for Godot:

Vladimir:
That’s what you think.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
2004:
“Don’t know where I’m goin’
I don’t like where I’ve been
There may be no exit
But hell I’m going in.”
2005:
“Niggas like myself kick back and peep game ’cause
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.”
2006:
“But she gave ten dollars for a ten cent hat and bought some store-bought cat food for that mean-eyed cat/
She bought a ticket with her tips and now we’re curled up on the sofa,
Me and her and that mean-eyed cat.”
2007:
“Luck by the tail!
How can you fail?
And best of all, it’s for sale!
The American dream!”
2008:
“And when you’re up, you’re up;
And when you’re down, you’re down.
And when you’re only halfway up,
You’re neither up nor down!”

2009:
I said “I know. Everybody funny. Now you funny too.”
So I go back home.
I tell my old lady I got a job, I’m gonna pay the rent.
She said “Yeah?”
I said “Oh yeah”.
Then I go to the bar.
I call the bartender.
Said “Look man, come down here”.
He got down there.
Said, “What you want?”

One bourbon.

                              One scotch.

                                                            And one beer.

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