Headfirst

Oh, hey there.

Of the list of important activities I had in mind for summer, I accomplished very few. I managed to ride my bike a whole lot, but no aquarium, no picnics, and actually, no beach. Yikes.

But what didn't make the list was a whole lot of great and/or varied things that fell into my lap. Here goes:

I was riding home one night and just felt winded and hot and couldn't believe how sweaty I was for an evening ride. I carried my bike up the stairs and felt sweat on my face, trickling through my beard and decided, "That's it. This beard is over. It is too hot this summer."

It's been five years since I'd seen my face, so I had pretty much forgotten what it looks like, so I was curious. Here's a hint: young, chubby, and awful. As soon as it starts to cool down, I'm growing the beard back.

Aside from the heat and the curiosity, I had a couple of other reasons. Vince was giving me a hard time one night about something entirely unrelated (refusal to own a car, I think) and out of nowhere he brought up that the reason I consistently don't get any interest from women had a lot to do with my beard. I told him that was nonsense, that people aren't that shallow, that the real reason is because I am socially uncomfortable, emotionally distant, and have bad skin. Duh. Also, I'm the worst possible mixture of uptight and apathetic. So a small amount of scientific curiosity/proving Vince wrong factored in to the Shave Decision.

Also, I sorta chickened out and was just going to give myself a trim and then I slipped and screwed it all up and the only way to fix it was to shave it off and start over.

Rest assured, I look twelve.


Other major life changes include a move from my downtown loft with well-intentioned bro-dude fuckups to an adorable Los Feliz Village apartment with my longtime friend from Ohio, Margaret Winnen. Things are going well now that we have had a long "discussion" over the merits of modern vs. 'shabby chic' furniture and that while a classic Guinness poster may be well-framed and a gift from a sister, it's still a beer poster and thus is not allowed in a common space.

The two-wheeled adventure we call life continues: while I can't justify driving anything with four wheels, skateboards included, I now let my bicycles rest 2 or 3 days a week and I take a different form of transportation. I acquired a motorcycle.

I miss my last motorcycle, with all its necessary tinkering and battery charging, but this one is much more reliable and convenient. It has saddlebags so I can take it grocery shopping. I had sort of forgotten that the last time I lived in LA, before France, riding that old Suzuki late at night was probably the most fulfilling part of my life here, getting off work at 5 in the morning and going over Cahuenga Pass, taking Mulholland Drive and going howling down the canyons.

This is significantly less fun during the day with traffic, but there are a few morsels of open road around now and then.

At my facility, we used to do audio post for a show called the Biggest Loser, where contestants enter into a competition to see who can lose the most weight. Recently, someone at the studio decided that we who work there should start a similar competition as a motivator for some of us to shed some unnecessary pounds. Fifty-dollar buy-in, winner take all. Sure, why not. Though it's sort of hard to go on a diet when you eat 98% plants already. My main approach has been to go for salads instead of sandwiches, soy yogurt instead of peanut butter in the morning, and to drink more caffeine than usual. The first 2 ounces of weight that I lost was my beard. Also, I joined a workout class.

I know, I know, I'm so SoCal. Fine. We meet in the morning at Griffith Park three days a week and run laps, use resistance bands, do crunches, whatever. Though some midwestern friends have seen fit to give me a hard time about being totally LA now, it's really not that big a deal, I just paid a little money for some extra motivation. And our instructor, Ricardo, is helpful and has us do plenty of exercises that I would never have known to exist.

It turns out that while I used to consider myself a pretty strong guy, always able to lift whatever needed to be lifted in a given situation because of a steady exercise regimen of moving heavy amps every day on tour and stacking boxes in a warehouse between tours, at this point my upper body strength is pathetic, probably because I don't do either of those things any more and all of my physical activity is now on a bike. As a result, I do pretty well with all the leg-based exercises and stamina, I'm weak as hell with the arm exercises right now. So I think I need this class right now.

Also, as a final push to cheat and lose a couple of pounds right before the final weigh-in on September 30, I am considering getting a hydrocolonic. Who's totally LA now?

Oh yeah, I made this, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njJE76eXYFI