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I asked.
They accepted.
From VP to first line.
As of today, I've been approved for up to twelve months leave. I think I'll take six.
I feel like a weight has been lifted, but a new one has been added. Shit, I have a LOT to do. Finances, visas, bills, leases, tickets, gear, it's daunting.
Brazil first? Argentina? Who's coming with?
This dog is obsessed, I tell you, OBSESSED with balls. All day. All night. Throw the ball. Throw the ball. Throw the ball. Drool. Throw the ball. Throw the ball. More drool.
He is such a boy. The pleading eyes. The drooling mouth. The nonstop begging to play with his balls. Kinda like me at Tassy's house. But different. She never really had to worry about severe puncture wounds.
Two of the five little monkeys that are destined to inherit all the crap in my garage that's destined to kill me one day.
This particular little monkey would almost certainly like most of those dangerous or dirty toys as his current interests include climbing to the top of hearths, coffee tables, stairwells and rocking chairs, launching brightly colored plastic things from second story banisters, and smearing all manner of food stuffs across his face. Clearly someone after my heart.
Surrender! You are powerless to resist his cuteness.
Don't be fooled. Behind those gentle eyes beats the heart of a ruthless killer.
I spent my required one day a year on the ranch. I'm pretty sure I'm two inches shorter from spine compression injuries sustained while on the back of this beast of burden. Only I'm not sure just who bears the burden in this relationship. At the end of the ride, I get a trough full of Advil, he gets a bag full of apples.
I'm not sure exactly what my father is trying to say with THIS picture, but Jesus, that's harsh. I inherited it from you, ya hypocrite.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to be thankful. And I don’t mean like seeing a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. I mean like being a turkey and seeing the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t mean in a “gee thanks” kinda way. I mean in a wellspring of teary blubbering at the blessings that have graced your life.
I don’t know why when surrounded by opportunity, I still focus on the obstacle. I don’t know why when graced with so much potential I only see the costs. I don’t know why when in my reflection others find beauty, I only see the blemish. I’ll begin to obsess; I’ll stare and stress and press and pick at those parts of my life until I’ve managed to turn my face as red and scarred as my soul.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been stressed lately. I’ve been unmotivated and insecure. I’ve been battered and bloodied and bruised and yet the only fingerprints I can find on the club are my own.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to be thankful.
At the very least my country gives me one day a year where I’m forced to realize just how asinine it is to wallow in want when you could be and probably should be rejoicing.
It’s become a bit of a tradition around here, the Thanksgiving letter. The statement of for what I’m thankful. I’ve been debating this a lot lately, and it’s been tough, as this has been a tough couple months. It’s been hard to see what I’m thankful for. So I think this year I’m going to spend a little time on who.
In 1996 I met Gary at my gym. He was an exceptional athlete, usually climbing with his wife, and, honestly, he never gave me the time of day. He was too busy climbing to be bothered. Subsequently, it came as more than a surprise when he suddenly asked me if I was interested in joining him on a climbing trip to the Owens River Gorge. With only a handful of trips to J-Tree under my belt and a few twitchy leads in the gym, I seemed the least likely choice for a partner. As Gary was one of the most talented climbers I knew, already leading well into the 5.12 range, not to mention the coolest guy in the gym, what with his pony tailed hair, his former-bodybuilder delts, and his utter disinterest in well, most everything that wasn’t interesting, I was positively astonished that I had been invited to join him.
As it turns out, Gary and his wife had recently had a baby boy, so climbing trips were only facilitated with a third partner. Basically, he needed a babysitter.
I think somewhere between my willingness to follow him up near anything in the Gorge and that moment when he looked down from the anchors of "Show Us Your Tits" and saw his son napping quietly on my chest while I lay on my pack in the spring sunshine of the Eastern Sierra, Gary and I became friends. I’ve been climbing with him since - and for the last four years, almost exclusively so.
But in Gary I have found far more than a rope gun and occasional belay slave who has encouraged me and supported me and coached me relentlessly on all my toughest ascents. I’ve found family and the person who has been arguably and consistently my best friend since this young man went west eleven years ago.
Gary grew up in Canada, a natural athlete who excelled in nearly every pursuit. An Olympic alternate in 1976 for the Canadian swim team, a member of the 1980 water polo team (needless to say, he doesn’t have much nice to say about President Carter), and an ex-champion bodybuilder. He has degrees (and frequently advanced degrees) in education and philosophy and psychology. He red-points 5.13 at age 43, and he didn’t even START climbing until he was 33. He even has the two most well adjusted, well-behaved children I have ever met. Ever. And he still has his hair.
Fucker.
But what inspires me most about Gary isn’t the fact that he’s smarter than me. Look, in my career, EVERYONE is smarter than me. It isn’t that he’s a better athlete. In my circle of friends, almost everyone was a collegiate athlete, and there are at least three Olympians. To put it bluntly, I’m the LEAST athletic person at my gym.
What impresses me most is his unrelenting, unwavering, utterly unflappable sense of self-confidence.
Gary approaches every decision, right or wrong, with poise and confidence. Not with arrogance or trepidation. He sees the risks and accepts them. He walks boldly, and in every part of his life, he climbs.
Gary has always been this person. You can see it in the way he carries himself. In the way he has lived his life. It’s made him successful at almost everything he has set his mind to doing. It isn’t without cost. For sure, he has made mistakes, and he has his scars (eleven surgeries in six years). But those scars tell the stories of a life unafraid.
Gary has been like an older brother. He has been the one person I would trust the most if, when out on the rocks, the shit really came down. I know that with Gary as my partner, when presented with real risk, real danger, I could rely on him to keep his head together, to make hard decisions, and to do everything possible to get us both out alive. He’s the friend who leapt off a cliff rather than face an oncoming avalanche. And survived both the fall and the trek out. He has found the presence of mind to aim for the dirt in the midst of a 50-foot ground fall. He has kept his cool in the face of life threatening run-outs on the rock, grizzlies in the Canadian outback, class six waterfalls and bone shattering rapids, and impossible corners on his motorcycle.
And he’s the one person who, when I took the longest falls in my life, both physically and emotionally, always held my rope fast.
So thank you, Gary. Thank you for your otherworldly patience despite my regular histrionics on any number of climbs. Thanks for not just booting me off the cliff in frustration when I start in with those histrionics. Thanks for convincing me to swap my stupid, sloppy, stretched out climbing shoes on what would become my favorite on-sight. Thank you for getting me to the hospital when I landed on my bean, and thank you for getting that same bean to the top of Black Velvet Canyon despite my concussion and the imminent thunderstorm two days later. And thanks for being the one person who called me daily and got me out of my house and out of my head when I most needed it.
Your friendship and your coaching has meant more to me than you know. I’m a better climber and a better person because of it. And for that, I am truly thankful.
Ahhhh...
After twelve years of loyal service in the gym and on the bike and on the wall and under the sun, after trips to at least four, maybe five continents and Lord knows how many rock walls, biking trails, and mountain tops, my favorite, most comfortable, most softest, most cushy bandana has finally up and died.
Sure, it's just a few holes, but although I like to look like faux white trash by wearing a do-rag on the treadmill, I don't want to look like real white trash by wearing a tattered do-rag on the treadmill.
It's not a big problem I suppose. I have at least four others in my closet. A color for each workout shirt. I may be trashy, but at least I'm coordinated. And I'll still keep the sweat out of my eyes.
Of course, If I really wanted to expose my dusty, desert roots, I could always sport this little number that I pulled out of an old (REAL OLD) box of books last month.
Oh man, did that ever look hot on my 501 jeans or over a well coiffed mullet.
I could sport this one too, but I think this is how I would have to wear it while living in Orange County.
And back off, people. I was thirteen. And we didn't get The Clash or New Order or Social D in Tucson. It was either that or Duran Duran, and I'll still take REO over those top-forty pretty boys even today.
Now if you will excuse me, I believe it's time for me to fly.
Go to hell.
May you all find exactly the (shallow, diseased, philandering, abusive, manipulative) men you deserve.
Thank you.
I think I need to spend the day watching football and drinking Bud Light.
My brother in law probably just jumped out of his chair, Bud Light in hand, cheering support, but he probably shouldn't break out the membership card and gilded remote control just yet. I'm not quite ready for born again masculinity.
I just fear I'm crossing into some dangerous territory with my metrosexuality. On Friday, my good and incredibly sexy friend Sharon, a personal trainer in Long Beach, called me and invited me to go shopping with her to help her pick out a new wardrobe of work-out clothing. I spent nearly three hours (yes, THREE HOURS) parked on a bench in Nike Town, as a personal fashion consultant, analyzing the break in the cuffs of glamorized sweat pants and discussing the best ways to accessorize a tank top. On the upside, I did get to spend three hours watching a woman with precisely the kind of body you would expect on a personal trainer (or a centerfold model) parade around in various shades of Spandex.
Then last night, my friend Malisa called me from Santa Monica. "The kids are with their dad, the boyfriend has been out of the country for two weeks, HELP! GET ME OUT OF THE HOUSE!" After a dozen phone calls to rally the troops, I was supposed to go out in Santa Monica last night with five women. This may make me seem like a stud on paper (pixels?), but in reality, the lone guy in a group of girls doesn't make me a stud. It makes me the token homosexual.
My friend Christine said we could remedy this by having all the women make out with me, and as I have already made out with at least two of them in the past, this didn't seem too improbable. Of course, as luck would have it, three cancelled, and Christine had to go to bed early, so the possibility of a good, old-fashoned, group mack fest vanished as quickly as our house shots at ZaZen.
Now, I'm not bitching about the prospect of getting properly liquored up with a group of single, good looking girls in LA, but I think I really need to find me some new wingmen. All my male friends in SoCal have been roped, tagged, and corralled into safety and comfort of tract housing and suburban living. I'm a dying breed.
Maybe I'm over reacting. Sure, I'm everyone's favorite fashion consultant, but I did go off-roading on Saturday - if only to get my ass to the Fontana rock quarry for an afternoon in the vertical. And I was supposed to take the VFR out for a morning ride in Ortega today.
Then again, as my proposed riding partner is openly gay, I'm not sure this is helping my case.
Yep. This would make me buy it.
Ever think that you learn way too much about a person when you visit a sex store? Seriously. The second you walk into the store you are taking your perversity at least partially public. A quick glance at someone's shopping basket and you can get a fairly clear view of what turns somebody on and of who or what they are into. And some of those visuals really are best left unknown. The robust woman holding the strap on. The Mr. Rogers looking gentleman with the "Barely Legal" DVD. I think that's why they ask you to rewind your tapes. Nobody wants to know where you finish.
Someone needs to do a study on breast augmentation. And I'm totally just the man for the job! Seriously, OC has gotta have the highest percentage of bolt-ons in the world. One walk around HB and I swear you would think that everyone in OC was sculpted from the same Barbie doll. It's like they hand out saline baggies at the DMV. Welcome to OC. Here's your driver's license and your new tits. Drive safely.
Speaking of new boobs, have you ever noticed that when someone gets a recently renovated rack they feel inclined, God bless them, to show EVERYONE the new additions to the family? Could you imagine if this translated into every form of plastic surgery? It would totally make penile enlargement a huge business, uh, so to speak. "Hey! I had some work done! Wanna see? Do you think it looks bigger? Firmer? Go on! Touch it! I'm so excited about it now. Wanna see HOW excited?" Come to think of it (so to speak), maybe that's not a bad idea. Would be a lot more action than I've been seeing lately.
I have been looking all over Monster Board for an opening as an international playboy. Oddly enough, nobody seems to be hiring. I'll settle for dotcom millionaire or kept man. Anyone know of any online pet stores or heiresses in Malibu who are hiring? I will totally be someone's sock puppeteer if it makes me rich and filthy. Regardless of where I have to wear the sock.
So I walked into the Catwalk in Huntington Beach yesterday with one of the sexiest women on LJ. I know, my life sucks, huh? So anyway, Catwalk is a store for the fashionably adventurous, your upwardly mobile porn star or your downwardly mobile rock star. The most popular item in the store seemed to be the new micro skirts, that I swear, SWEAR were no wider than six inches. Six inches. I know women with belts that are wider. Now as supportive as I am of these skirts in theory, the only people who can wear them properly are bulimic Thai prostitutes or ten year old girls. Neither of which I find particularly provocative - even in six inch micro skirts.
The upside of spending a weekend rock climbing in Joshua Tree:
And look, I'm smiling, muthereffers. Smiling. Again! Now leave me and my too-cool-for-teeth scowling face alone from now on.
The downside of spending a weekend climbing in Joshua Tree:
I swear that hand crack had the texture of broken glass and sandpaper.
Ah, good times.
As much as I have bitched about my chosen career path, I have to admit, there are some very REAL benefits to monkeyhood. There are the obvious financial advantages to carrying a briefcase (backpack actually), plus the 401Ks and stock purchase plans and benefit packages. There's the free ISP, cell phone, and home phone. There is access to a 24 hour travel agent and the 330,000 frequent flier miles in my account. And as I'm typing this naked while I'm on a conference call, I spend a whole lot less time in the pleated Dockers than the rest of the Digeratti.
But I think my favorite part of corporate monkeyhood are the hotels. When I bounce around to the various cities on the west coast, I get to stay in hotels that have negotiated contracts with my company. And on the west coast those include the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, the Four Seasons in Vancouver, and my personal favorite, the Fairmont Olympic in Seattle.
The Fairmont is the kind of place where all the towels and all the linens are always at risk of ending up in your roller-bag as they are infinitely better than anything you can get at the local Bed Bath and Beyond. I'm not sure just how many threads went into that comforter, but I'm pretty sure I can't count that high. It's the kind of place where the response to "Please call me Jim" is always "No problem Mr. Parisi."
But I think their commitment to keeping the customer happy has gotten a little out of hand. In each room is a digital scale. And the scale claimed that I had dropped almost ten pounds to just over 142.
142 pounds? Really, I think not. My weight has not fluctuated more than seven pounds since 1994, and to drop that much I had to spend a month in Africa. Every scale I have been on has claimed in the range of 150. I just went and confirmed this again on the scale at my gym.
Look, maybe some of your customers think that for $400 a night they deserve a little fantasy with their pay-per-view porn, but I'm not one of them. I'm thrilled to have the free bottle of water waiting for me at my bedside every night, and the loofah in the bathroom. I appreciate the the jazz collection already loaded in the CD player and the full health-club on the second floor. And as much as I love the chocolate covered strawberries you have left for me in my room, please, my hips are my business.
Faster than a sale on Jimmy Choo's!
Stronger than the smell from the cosmetics counter at Macy's!
Able to leap lines at night clubs in a single bound!
It's METRO MAN!
Now if he could only figure out how to properly accessorize a cape...
No amount of narcissism can mask your ugliness when you see your worst behavior reflected in the eyes of someone you love.
Have you ever noticed that Eastern European women don't seem to have any middle ground with regard to physical beauty? Seriously. Like they don't have any average or "attractive" people. It's either supermodel, or dear-God-it's-coming-toward-me. Pretty much a choice between Paulina Porizkova or Mrs. Potatohead.
Maybe this is just the liquor talking tonight.
I hadn’t been on the VFR in a while. At least not for any real riding. I have had the occasional commute or run to the gym, but I really haven’t done a good ride through the twisties for three or four weeks. I woke up Saturday to one of those fall days when the sky is crisp and blue, freshly laundered by several weeks of periodic rain and Santa Ana winds. It’s hard to beat Southern California in November. In the fall the sky sheds its skin. We shake the tourists off the beaches and paint the mountains in green and blue, and if we are lucky, white.
I put on my leathers, packed my tank bag with a bottle of water, a digital camera and an extra shirt, anticipating the cold ride home after dark. I backed the VFR out from the side of the house and motored out of Newport and onto the freeway for my long ride up to Los Angeles.
I pulled into Santa Monica and onto PCH just before 2 PM, thankful to be out of the urgency and barely controlled chaos of the infamous Los Angeles 405 freeway and finally free of the deafening roar that comes with 85 MPH and speeding SUVs. It was one of those afternoons where the color of the ocean mirrored the color of the sky. The beaches were free of tourists, and only the neoprene coated surfers were making their way to and from the cars parked along side the highway. The anticipation of weekend rain seemed to keep people home. Even the packs Ricky Racers and weekend cruisers seemed to stay home. Sure, I must have passed thirty or forty guys making their way up PCH on their various canyon runs, but on a busy weekend, you could find yourself in individual packs of thirty riders.
Right before Topanga Canyon, a rider pulled up next to me on a gorgeous Ducati 999r , a $30,000 street legal rocket ship. Ridiculously expensive, notoriously unreliable, and tragically outclassed when compared to the liter bikes just spit out of the Japanese factories for a fraction of the money, but still a speeding sculpture of red plastic and tube steel. And nothing talks to you like a Ducati. The sound of those pipes tucked up under that seat is deep, authoritative, dangerous. It’s petrol powered sex. Sure, the Suzuki might get the cup, but the Ducati gets the girl.
He bolted off the light, and with a twist I was right behind him. I may not be riding a 350 pound race bike, but my VFR is no lap dog. Sixty happens in just over three, and if you have the road and the balls, 160 isn’t impossible. With 126 HP and an 800 cc VTEC V4, my ride may not be the best at any one thing, but it’s possibly the best at doing everything.
I chased the Italian for a good ten miles. Cat and mousing him through the SUVs and ubiquitous black, German sedans of Malibu. 55, 65, 75 MPH up PCH. Hair splitting the lanes, left, right, left again. Each taking a lane at the lights. Where’s the opening? Is that Ford coming over? Watch the mirrors. Watch the blinkers. Watch the driver’s head. Two fingers on the brake. Two fingers on the clutch. Thumb covering the horn. Living dangerously. But living.
He finally dumped me for one of the many canyon roads, I waved him off and continued to ride up through Malibu, the hills all green from the recent rains, up toward Oxnard. I finally picked a quick right up into the hills to ride some twisties and get some perspective on the coast. The road was tight and dangerous. Narrow asphalt folds like black ribbon. Turns so tight that frankly I lacked the skills to execute them with either speed or grace. But it was good practice, and evidence that maybe I need to get back in the mountains and back in the parking lots to work on that bike control before I start taking those Malibu canyons at any speed.
But the view from the top, the pacific stretched out below, multi-million dollar ranches dotting the hillsides, spectacular. I finally raced back down toward the highway and an easy, if chilly ride back to Los Angeles, and back to home.
Helluva weekend. Finding myself on a near perfect date with a beautiful girl with silver blue eyes (I'm such a sucker for the eyes), a bottle of good wine, a tiny hole in the wall Italian place in HB that nobody knows about, and hours of conversation over a meal that could possibly feed a small African nation.
Finding myself racing through a near perfect Saturday afternoon, a sky impossibly blue, and chasing a Ducati 999r through the wonderfully light fall traffic on PCH, carving through the green hills of bungalows and beautiful people in Malibu.
Finding myself in Joshua Tree with a new climbing partner, and the sweet relief of once again being lost among the rocks in the closest place I know to heaven. Finding myself dirty and tired and thoroughly at ease with things as they are. Finding myself on top of a stone monument to the timelessness of nature and the insignificance of my place in it.
Finding myself with roughly a hundred new pictures to share.
Just finding myself.
And I'm to find myself in Seattle tonight. And then San Fran on Wednesday. If you live there. Ping me.
You people are a chatty bunch when I get you fired up. Sixty comments? You all should know better than to pick a fight with Bridget. Those legal types don't back down easy. Still, I like that about you, no matter on what side of the fence you sit. Except you wacky red people on the wrong side. I'm blocking all your IPs today.
I'm posting all this from my new Powerbook 12 inch, 1.3 ghz G4 with a superdrive and 1.25 gig of RAM. Seems that when I bought my new camera it was only a matter of time before I would kill my beloved Titanium with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos - all about 3 megabytes a piece. I was looking at $600 in upgrades for memory and disk, and as my Apple was three years old I decided it was probably money better spent to spring for a new one.
I opted for portability this time around and went with the foot-long, but I already miss that 15 inch screen. I may need to swap this one out at the Apple store.
Anyway, between the camera and the computer I've been taking pictures like a new parent, only without the poop and sleepless nights. And really, no matter how expensive this Mac, it's still way cheaper than a college education.
Regardless, I've even got three different women who have seen my pics (OK everyone's favorite has been in most of my pics so that probably doesn't count) and want me to shoot them for book covers, promotional materials and general internet naughtiness.
Don't envy me yet. I may get to take pictures of pretty girls, but it's still been more than three months since I have had a date. Although that should be changing tonight. Figures I would visit San Francisco only to meet a girl from OC. Go me!
On to the artsy photo crap.
I gotta admit, this did crack me up today.
I guess that explains all the fires and mudslides and earthquakes in Cali. Maybe we've been smote.
And then this was sent from a reader in the UK. I was serious with what I said about the rest of the world, kids. Nobody understands this. Nobody.
And finally, one more...
Ok, so maybe that's a little much, but if you have an even vaguely progressive, liberal, or environmental agenda, you can pretty much kiss it goodbye for the next four years.
Never in my life have I been more convinced that the bulk of the population in this country is, well, just plain WRONG. I always knew they were gullible. Frequently obnoxious. And usually self-absorbed, but I always figured that as a people we had a bit more sense than this.
Sigh.
Let me put it this way to all of you who still don't get it. The vast majority of educated population of the free world is strongly opposed to this president and this administration.
But apparently, that's his appeal.
So let's see what we got.
Cheaper gas? Nope.
A better economy? Nope.
Safer planet? Nope.
Osama bin Laden? Nope.
Democracy in Iraq? Nope.
Balanced budget? Nope.
Support of the global community? Nope.
Peace in the middle east? Nope.
Cleaner environment? Nope.
Better healthcare? Nope.
The assurance of a fair and balanced Supreme Court? Nope.
But I got $300 bucks back in my taxes.
And the near certainty that 10% of the population will continue to live without the same rights as the rest of us.
And I'll have something to write about for the next four years. I know it's not silver, but right now, I'll take whatever lining I can get.
So here is my question to all of you who voted red: How will my life improve under this administration? As far as I can tell, you voted AGAINST the evidence. You voted in spite of his record, not because of it. So someone, please, explain that to me. I really will listen to any logical argument. But I swear, if any of you use the word "values" even once, so help me God, I will hunt you down and beat some sense into you with that book that has clearly left you without any.
So, um, is anyone else embarrassed by phalic produce? Am I the only one who breaks chunks off bananas rather than felating my fruit? Come on. Admit it. I can't be the ONLY one.
GOOOOOOOOO Bush!
No. Really. Go. Like Away.
Now.
Please. Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.
I'm tired of being embarrassed about my country. And, honestly, I really don't like hockey.
Ever feel like you are living your own personal version of "Office Space?" Don't anybody dare screw with MY Swingline.
Overheard:
"We need to get to a deeper level, and by that I mean a higher level."
Blink.
"Why did we drop the price from 10K to 4K? Commodity environment. Afterall, the competition is free."
Sigh.
