Musings - Michael Fucking Chabon

"I have a deadline. I'm glad. I think that will help me get it done."
Michael Chabon

No shit buddy.  The question is what kind of deadline, are you paying the recipient, or is it a pissed off judge, with a crushing case load full of meth heads and violent crime dealing with budget cuts.
Anyway.  Michael Chabon and Adam Gopnik are at the Herbst tonight and I wish I was there.  Gopnik I can do without.  Decent essayist, but I'll take real reporters like Jane Mayer, Ken Auletta or John Lee Anderson, (ok Anderson writes for the Times, but his stuff is in the New Yorker quite a bit) any day.  Gopnik did a send-up on Sing Along Sound of Music about ten years ago that was very very funny, but he lost me when he went to Paris to write about life there with his young son.  It was cloying and too easy.  Yeah it was a best seller but how could he miss the side of that barn.  It's like taking cute pictures of kittens or baby seals.  Or your children or dog.

Chabon on the other hand is pretty amazing.  I have only read Wonder Boys and bits of Manhood for Amateurs, which I also wanted to hate.  Do I really care about your sex life with your wife or your getting laid at fifteen by one of your mother's friends ?  I didn't think so but he writes beautifully.  He is a good interview  as well and Ian would have liked it.


Nothing in morning with client meeting at 8:30 which I thought would last 30 minutes but stretched to 90.  He was manic and I went along with him.  It was 10:15, and I was already behind, mentally parsing up the day in six minute increments, trying to figure out how to get everything done.  Park in Portsmouth Square in Chinatown, race around the corner and nearly run into the column above.  Strength.  Slow down.  Breathe.

Walk into gym at 6:00.  I hate Equinox at 6:00 on any evening except Fridays and Mondays are the worst.  Full of young people in Lulu Lemon, I am the oldest straight guy by a good 15 years.  Go stake out some space in the corner and try to get it started.  The trainers are all really cool and put the bells back between client sets when I am around, but there are only two 16kgs for the whole gym, and this guy is holding them doing heel raises.  He could have been using dumbells, or any two of the hundred or so 35 pound plates around, but no, had to use the kbells.  Grab two 35lb dumbells and start.


Pushups to renegade rows, 5 pushups to five rows, 2x
10 Goblet squats, 24kg
Walking alternating overhead press, ten out, ten back,  muttering Michael Fucking Chabon on the punch up r,l,r
Single leg squats to box, 10r/10l, right pretty good, left feels like shit
3x

BUP 12kg 5r/5l, 16kg 5r/1l, then back to 12, spastic but got better each circuit
windmills, 8r/l, spastic cause trying to keep torso straight
30 24kg swings, tired of being spastic so these were good and strong with bell flying up
TGUS, 2 16kg l/r, 2 24kg, l/r, spastic cause trying to keep good rkc form, though looking forward on the lunge helped.  Also better each circuit.
3x

After tomorrow it gets ugly.  Stay strong, don't forget to breathe.