Al Gone

Looking for Al? Here I am...

Gayest Song Ever!!!

Ok, here's the challenge:

Post the lyrics to the gayest song ever!!! I want songs that with just one hearing can arch your wrist, lift your pinky, cause your hips to swish, your tongue to lisp. I want songs that Elton John rolls his eyes at. I want songs that Boy George calls soft. I want songs that you're embarassed to admit to knowing. Make it happen! Here's my first entry (not the gayest ever, but submitted for your review):


DANCE WITH ME
Orleans

CHORUS:

Dance with me, I want to be your partner.
Can't you see the music is just starting?
Night is falling, and I am falling.
Dance with me.

Fantasy could never be so giving.
I feel free, I hope that you are willing.
Pick your feet up, and kick your feet up.
Dance with me.

REFRAIN:

Let it lift you off the ground.
Starry eyes, and love is all around us.
I can take you where you want to go.

CHORUS

REFRAIN

CHORUS

Tri Me

Code Brown
Well, I'm still in brown town. Bland food (white rice, plain bagels etc.) seem to give me no problem. But the 2 slices I ate last night came BLASTING out the ole chocolate starfish about 5 minutes after ingestion. FUCK! And today, I had to bail out of a run at the 4 mile mark for a good 15 minute session of grunting and sweating. All is not well in Al's bowels.

Al Jonesin' For A Tri Bike

Dudes/dudettes: I'm jonesin' for the full aero kit. This tri fired me UP! I have no fucking clue why an aero bike would be better than my Lemond Zurich, but I want one. That's the kind of dick I am. Here's the run down on my tri performance.


I placed 68th overall and 15th in my age group. I had a 1:45.53 for the tri. I can't really figure out the splits on the tri website. I know I did my 1/2 mile lake swim and transition to bike in about 13 minutes (the time from start to the end of the transition--the moment when I pushed the bike over the pad and started leg 2). Coupla things I know will improive this split next time: I won't "wait" at that start to avoid really mixing it up in the water at start. This caused me a minute or more. I'll set up my transition area better/faster next time. This cost me 30 seconds prolly.

I know I did the bike to run transition and the 4 mile run in about 32 and small change. That's all I know here. This transition could have been faster too.

Side notes:

Props to Al K. he came in to this tri withoput much training and manned up with a 1:47 finish.

KICK ASS HEYWOOD! Heywood Jablome is doing an adventure race this weekend (a triathlon that includes swimming a waterfall, mountain biking down a lava field, and corn holing a polar bear). Heywwod is a stud, and I know he'll do us proud.

Freddy-boy is core training, running, and prepping for cross season. He's out of the closet, tearin' up the yoga mat, and ready/willing/able to eat quiche.

GVB: what the fuck is gvb doing? To quote Pink Floyd: "Is there anybody...out there..."

ROUGH WEEK...HAPPY ENDING!

Tough Week For Al
I was definitely under the weather this week. Head cold and the runs for most of the week. Slight improvement over the least day or so, but I still couldn't eat a meal without visiting the can shortly thereafter. SO, needless to say, I was nervous about my triathlon today (my first).





Al Tris Hard

I was nervous and unable to sleep last night. I kept seeing these images of a tri suit clad AL limping along, shit spraying out his dehydrated ass. And the day seemed to be living up to expectation at its start. (I hit the can twice before 6:30.) Then to add insult to injury, technical difficulties struck. I was setting up my transition area when I noticed my watch doing weird things. Heiroglyphs and fading numbers flashing on the screen. Guess that battery is bad. Ok, no biggie. What's a race without a watch, right? My trials were not finished though. I set up my transition area, filled my bottles and, WITH 30 MINUTES UNTIL THE START, went to harden up the tires with a few pounds of air. The front got nice and hard...no issue. The rear? PHSSSSSSSSSWOOO! Immediate and total air release when I threw the pump over the valve. I prayed for just a simple screw up with the presta valve--I was over tired. But it turns out that the valve had a tear near the base of its shaft in the rubber. So now I'm tearing off the wheel and powering through a change. But I start brain farting and worrying because I've only got one spare tube and the other is too fucked to take a patch and serve back up. I get the tube in and full, but now I'm fighting the derailleur and panicking. The brain just won't function. Mr. Ironman (two bikes down on the rack) took pity and showed me that I'd managed to foul up the chain alignment. He helped me and I was back on track (covered with grease), THANKS DUDE!!!

THE RACE
1/2 mile swim, 16 mile bike, 4 mile run

We headed to the water, Al K and I. We both were NOT wetsuited and shivering our asses off (it was about 62 degrees). The water was a bit warmer than the air though...not too terrible once in and the hyperventilating stopped. Both Al and I hung back a bit at the start, avoiding as much face kicking, head bashing as possible. The lake swim went smoothly, the only note was that the weed/ reeds were very long and all over face, arms etc at start and finish...a bit freaky but not bad.

After the water I ran up to the transition and got the bike out of the rack. I headed out prepared for a smooth ride. All went well but FUCK! This course was hilly. The whole of it was typical Catskills up and down...think Bear Mtn area and you'll have similar terrain.

I made it in not too battered, and I slipped on my kicks and headed out. I felt good on the run. By mile 2 my wheels were turning smoothly and I was over the bike leg tightness. I pushed it hard and wasn't passed by anyone but did a good deal of passing.

Al K. pushed it hard in his first tri too. He was ahead of me after the H2O by a few strokes. He lengthened that lead to a minuite on the bike (I saw him heading out of T2 as I headed in), but I managed to burn it on the run a bit and catch him. In the end, he finished about 1 minute after me. We were both really pumped.

In all a great end to a shitty week. (Now I need a tri bike and a wetsuit.)

I think my overall was 1:45 for the whole shebang. They haven't processed chip times yet. I'll post all when I know.

Al Out!

SO MANY ASSHOLES, SO LITTLE TIME...

From Reuters:

Telephone telepathy -- I was just thinking about you

NORWICH (Reuters) - Many people have experienced the phenomenon of receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after thinking about them -- now a scientist says he has proof of what he calls telephone telepathy.

Rupert Sheldrake, whose research is funded by the respected Trinity College, Cambridge, said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e-mails.

Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone.

"The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected," he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. "The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one."

He said he found the same result with people being asked to name one of four people sending them an e-mail before it had landed.

However, his sample was small on both trials -- just 63 people for the controlled telephone experiment and 50 for the email -- and only four subjects were actually filmed in the phone study and five in the email, prompting some scepticism.

Undeterred, Sheldrake -- who believes in the interconnectedness of all minds within a social grouping -- said that he was extending his experiments to see if the phenomenon also worked for mobile phone text messages.

Here's my morning example of telepathy:
I just had 3 cups of joe and a big ole bowl of bloatmeal. I can just sense--it's this hazy, ill-defined feeling at the outer edges of my consciousness!--that I'll be dropping a growler in an hour or so. Maybe I can get into science too. Move over Dr. Sheldouche!

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Steve Irwin, the TV presenter known as the "Crocodile Hunter," has died after being stung by a stingray in a marine accident off Australia's north coast.

Media reports say Irwin was diving in waters off Port Douglas, north of Cairns, when the incident happened on Monday morning.

Irwin, 44 was killed by a stingray barb that went through his chest, according to Cairns police sources. Irwin was filming an underwater documentary at the time.

Ok, we've all heard the story. Here's my spiel: I'm on my way to work listening to the radio news. The moron anchor goes into this report "In a tragic irony, Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, is killed doing what he loved most: studying wildlife..."

Now before I begin, let me give this disclaimor: the loss of life is never funny (ok, sometimes it's funny when a particularly egregious asshole dies spectacularly). And I don't want to get mileage out of death (unless, of course, there's something funny about the death). Here's what bothers me...

1) Asshole! There's nothing ironic here! The term irony always refers to a reversal of expectations--where what happens is the opposite of expectation. This moron, Irwin, has been shoving his head in crocodile's mouths for years. He plays with poisonous snakes, pets scorpions, dangles his infant over alligator pits. OF COURSE HE WAS KILLED PLAYING WITH A DANGEROUS CREATURE! (He was 3 feet from the stingray when its tail flicked and a poisonous barb punctured his heart.)

2) He did not "study" wildlife. He was a circus act, a clown, the fool forcing himself into the faces of fierce creatures.

3) This is not tragic. Today, there are a slew of animals saying, "fuck, finally a moment of peace!"


In other news, I'm resting today. This Sunday is my triathlon, and I'm beat up from a weekend of labor. I'm not sure, but I don't think floor refinishing is on the taper program. Tomorrow, I plan on running with Al K.


For my friend, Howardd, I'd like to close today's blog with the words of the great Mike Tyson, sage, poet, racconteur: "Look at, you scared now, you punk. Bitch. Scared like a little white ho. Scared of the real man. I'll fuck you until you love me."

AL GREEN

WHAT A FUCKING WASTE

Al is very envious of those who vacationed this holiday weekend:
I spent the entire weekend sanding, staining, polyurethaning a VERY old floor in my living room. It was buckled and pocked and pitted and generally fucked. Looks good now though (I've been on the fucker since Thursday night). I haven't spent this much time on my knees since my penitentiary days.

I've gotten in 5 ers every day. But they've been shitty, rip the dirty clothes off, throw the running duds on, race out the door and back runs. Just crap. What a wash out weekend!