Best Movie Ever (perhaps)

I saw Race Across the Sky last night, a documentary about the mountain bike race by the same name. It was fantastic. I would recommend it to anyone who can travel back in time to yesterday to watch it. (It was only in theaters one night only.)

There are very few times that I cry - when I listen to organ music, when I hear stories of dogs dying, when people make fun of my mustache, etc. However, I may have cried while watching this movie that documents not a 100-mile mountain bike race with more than 12,000 feet of total climb, but a triumph of the human spirit. How can you not cry as you watch a 65-year-old man with two new prosthetic knees be stopped at the first checkpoint because he did not make the 4-hour cutoff?

In cycling there can be a lot of douchery - what with the leg-shaving and $18,000 carbon fiber superbikes - but you can't have anything but love and admiration for the participants as they struggle through the Race Across the Sky.

Uh, apparently I don't know how to imbed YouTube videos. ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpf1LHfLz0o

Growing pains

I am growing a mustache.

I am doing so for several reasons. (1.) I want to be Magnum PI for Halloween. It will be a trial run to see if I want to be Magnum PI for the rest of my life. As if there is any question in my mind. (2.) I feel that mustaches run in my family, and who am I to sever these familial ties? (3.) If mustaches don't make a comeback now, I am afraid they never will. Like the fedora. I feel that I need to do my part. (4.) I have wanted to for years.

The goal:


Current status:


Wish me luck.

Seattle, let me count the ways

Seattle is lovely. Granted I have only been here during the summer, the brief non-rainy season, but it has been nothing but delightful in the time I have been here. I had a tough time when I first moved from New York since, by default, I was successful and trendy simply because I lived there. Regardless of how much money I made (not much) or how many celebrities I partied with (none), I lived in New York, which made me important. At least it made me think that other people thought I was important, which is all that being important really is.

But then I moved to Seattle. Now I am in a city that is remarkable for few things - Jimmi Hendricks, Microsoft, Starbucks - and infamous for others - ceaseless rainfall, incessant recycling. No one is impressed when you say you live in Seattle. No one is jealous, there is no Sex in the City, no Housewives, no CSI. (Grey's Anatomy doesn't count. Neither does Frasier.) Kind of disheartening, I know. However, it requires that I form my own opinions and not rely on others'.

It's probably the same difference between dating a hot girl and dating a homely one.

And, as I said before, it is lovely. It is surrounded by water, but is not on the ocean. I have never understood why people consider the ocean beautiful. It is just a straight line on the horizon. Where is the beauty in that? No, Seattle is surrounded by water surrounded by mountains, so while you get the beauty of water views and shipping yards and sailboats, you also get a horizon accentuated with mountain ranges and snow-capped peaks. Makes a much better screensaver than the ocean would.

The residential streets of Seattle are fun to drive on (for you lucky suckers with cars). They have tight little roundabouts at intersections. And instead of speed bumps, they have three semi-roundabouts on a straight stretch of the road - one on one side, then one on the other, then one back on the other side, forcing you to ess around them. It just seems like a much more charming way to slow down than driving over a big plop of pavement.

Seattle has pine trees. The problem with leafy trees is that they lose their leaves. Sure they are beautiful in the fall and smell good in the Spring, but in the winter they are sad and dead-looking. Pine trees stay beautiful all year round. And fortunately there is enough ivy and leaves around the city to still make the Fall look like Fall, but not so many that once the leaves have gone that the whole place looks desolate.

And then there are the hills. Hills are are great. I don't know how I could go back to living in a flat city. Everywhere you go you get a new view. It is like building theater-style seating into the city. It's an intense workout running and biking up hills. It's a roller coaster driving down them. They act as easy landmarks to find yourself, lest you lose yourself. Love the hills.

It has two floating bridges. How much cooler are floating bridges than suspension bridges? Much, much cooler. It's kind of like being on a boat. A long flat boat that doesn't move. So kind of a boring boat, but a boring boat is more fun than an exciting bridge.

I've heard anecdotally that Seattle has a good music scene, although I have yet to confirm this personally. Maybe I'll consult Wikipedia for proof later.

Seattle is a nice city to ride a bike in. That is more important to me than it is for some, but I think that bike-friendliness is generally an indicator of overall friendliness. I admit that it is no Portland or Berkeley, but it makes for a pleasant commute and for relaxing rides on the weekends.

It gives you all the excitement of a big city (professional athletics, big-name bands, etc.) paired with the charm of a small one (the Puyallup Fair gets more hype than anything I have seen in my time here).

Seattle, I approve. You're not as sexy as New York, not as glamorous as LA, not as political as DC, not as hip as San Fran, not as hippie as Portland, not as gritty as Chicago, not as proud as Boston, not as colorful as Miami, but you make me happy.

It is good that man should be alone

NOTE: Mom, don’t worry. I’m talking about my living situation, not my philosophy on marriage.

So for those of you (all three of you that read this blog, that is) who don’t know, I now live in Seattle. It’s a lovely place and I have enjoyed the month and three days that I have been here very much. People are generally nice and the weather is generally good, although I know that will soon change. The weather, not the people that is … hopefully.

And something else that is lovely - I live alone in a one-bedroom apartment on Queen Anne. Now, when I first decided to live alone, I was somewhat hesitant. I was concerned that my pure, uninhibited natural man would take over and I would spend my nights wallowing in dirty laundry and running around in my underpants eating Oreos sloppily dipped in curdled milk. That has not happened - not yet, at least.

In fact, I am much more productive and clean than I ever was living with previous roommates. Perhaps it is because I have no one to blame my mess on. Or maybe it is because I have to prove to myself that I am all growed up. Or, mst likely, it is just because my apartment seems so new to me, and it is always easier to take care of things when they are new. Like why we love babies and not 15-year-olds.

Another concern that I had moving into an apartment alone was that I would become (more) introverted and (more) asocial. It is almost impossible to avoid human interaction when you have roommates, hard as you may try. So without that interaction natively built into my living situation, how would I cope? Would I watch Friends reruns late at night to pretend they were my own?

Well, it may be too early to tell. However, what I will say is that I want what I don’t have. That is simply how I am wired. When I have a salad for lunch, I wish I had an avocado BLT; when I have an avocado BLT, I wish I had jalapeno poppers; when I have jalapeno poppers, I wish I had a glass of milk; etc. Not just for lunch, but for life.

So when I come home to an apartment full of roommates, I only want to escape them and have some time alone. I want to isolate myself so that I can have what I don’t have - a place to call my own. But now, when I come home to an empty apartment - just me and my Craigslist couch - I want to be with people. I want to reach out and touch someone. This is very good for me, and something that I have had a hard time doing at other times in my life.

Living alone, as I have experienced it thus far, is a good thing for me. It makes me want to be with people more. And it gives me time to do other things best done privately.

I'm Angry on the Inside

The list of reasons that I blog is extensive. To practice writing something other emails, to wake up the next morning to see if anyone has commented, to boost my sex appeal, etc. At the top of that list has to be the ability to passive-aggressively complain about the times that I have been abused.

I ride my bike to work. I enjoy it. Every morning that I get on my bike I am like a kid again. Often the only thing that drags me out of bed in the morning is knowing that after I shower and pretend to comb my hair, I get to ride my bicycle. Even if I dread every other part of my day, at least I as I ride for 25 minutes to and from work. It is faster than taking the subway, and I always get the best parking spot in the city - locked to the sign post directly in front of my building. I only have to take 7 steps before I am through our revolving doors and on my way to work. Life couldn't get better.

But today the building manager told me that I can't lock my bike in front of the building anymore. I threw the kind of fit that I throw - first by agreeing to do whatever I am told, and then nervously trying to stand up for myself and eventually walking away in the middle of a semi-coherent sentence.

The best answer that he gave me was that I'm not supposed to lock my bike there. I don't really know what that means. Here's what I do know:

• It is not illegal to lock your bike to street signs as long as you don't block the sidewalk or cover the sign itself.
• The sidewalk is public property, not owned by the building.
• The building owner does not allow bikes inside, so I cannot take my bike in with me.
• If I don't lock it up outside my building, I will just lock it up outside the building next door, then making it another building manager's problem. That's like picking up your dog's poop and throwing it over your fence into your neighbor's yard.
• The month of May is National Bike Month. Have a heart.
• I have been locking my bike there at that sign post for almost a year now. Doesn't that give me a legal right to continue to park there? Come on you lawyers, help me out.

Anybody who hates bikes hates childhood memories. And anybody who hates childhood memories has no soul. Why does my building manager hate childhood memories? I don't know. He is from the Bronx, so maybe he never rode a bike.

I heart New York, kind of

I haven't written much about New York. The city is fascinating, it really is. Perhaps even more fascinating, in fact, than Rexburg. I would like to list my ten favorite things about New York, so please indulge me.

I am not sure why I feel compelled to list these now, but maybe it is an attempt to convince myself that the Tony-NY romance is still alive. The honeymoon is definitely over, but maybe the flame of romance can yet be re-kindled.

1. 5pointz graffiti in Long Island City, Queens - Every day that I ride the 7 train, which is every day that I don't ride my bike to work, I ride past this place. It is a city block which is comprised of several warehouses, entirely covered in graffiti. It is right next to the MOMA PS1 contemporary art center and a fascinating urban art hub. I should go take a closer look, but graffiti and barbed wire scare me.
2. Softball in Central Park - I probably like this because it represents the warm summer evenings and because I enjoy kicking picnickers off the Great Lawn. Also, it is the kind of thing that you tourists just can't do. They can't come to New York for a weekend and be on a softball team.
3. Old Jewish guys - They are just delightful.
   
4. Williamsburg on Shabbat - It is like stepping into a different world. As you walk down the street, it is all a flash of payot and kolpik. (I don't really know those words, I just Wikipedia'd them.) Women and men walk on different sides of the streets, and I wonder if I am proud or ashamed to be a Gentile.
5. Street Meat - The best deal in town. With the recent Swine Flu "outbreak," perhaps I should steer clear of these vendors, but I can't help myself. The meat is undercooked, the utensils are flavored with the grease of chicken past, and the cooking surface is peppered with the same airborne particulate that makes the air unfit to breathe, but it is wonderful. Give me a falafel over penne ala Vodka (is that a fancy dish? I hope so ...) any day.
6. Girls that wear short skirts and stilettos on Friday nights regardless of the weather - They make the rest of us feel warm in the winter.
7. Bike messengers - I am biased because I love bicycles, but I'm not sure if the city would be the same with out bike messangers. They are dangerous and embody the "I live dangerous" attitude that everyone has to have to a certain degree to live in New York. Their disregard for crossing traffic and common sense is amusing.
8. Knicks fans - Just because the only thing they hate more than losing is winning, because they know that it won't last. The same can be said for Jets and Mets fans. It's such a bitter way to live life.
9. The guys who work on Wall Street - Proof that you can make a living out of being a frat boy.
10. Halloween - Adults dressing up like children. It's charming, really.
11. The F word - I found it highly offensive at first, and took it personally any time I heard it, but I now find it quite endearing and remarkably diverse. It is a word appropriate for work and play, for love and hate. I would totally start using it if I could do it without giggling and blushing.
12. Garbage, garbage everywhere - You have no idea how many times I have had to stop and get plastic bags untangled from the gears in my bike. The willingness to cope with the ubiquity of garbage is part of what it takes to live in New York. You don't care, you don't complain, you just step over it and keep on walking.
13. BET - Did you know that they actually have advertisements for shows on BET on the uptown and Bronx-bound trains? I always wonder if I am lost when I start to see more and more BET ads. Of course, I have never watched an episode of Harlem Heights, so maybe I should try it before passing judgment.
14. Exposed brick - New York loves its exposed brick. Not sure why, but we love it. Having an apartment with exposed brick is the holy grail of deliberately unfinished walls. You stare it for hours and call your mom to tell her about how bricky and exposed it is. Again, not sure why.

So 14, not 10. I guess you make me smile, New York. But I still hate you for charging me $900 in rent and for having so many potholes.

Longer than it looks

Last Saturday I ran the Salt Lake City marathon. Although I did not win - disappointing, I know - I did finish. Going in my goal was to come across in under four hours, which is a fairly common marathon goal. I missed that goal by just over a minute, at 4:01:15 according to my timing chip. I'm not complaining, though, because after 26.2 miles, turns out my time didn't matter that much to me. It probably means a lot to other people who were further from dying in a pool of tired sweat. But to me, all I wanted to do was cross the finish line and eat a Creamies. (That was one of the sponsors. Chocolate ice cream popsicle after a marathon. It seemed like a good idea to someone, I guess.)

The course was pleasant, and the weather almost ideal for marathoning. The first half was cooler, about 50 degrees, with no wind. After rounding the 13-mile marker - at about 1:57 for me - the clouds blew away and the air started to heat up, but nothing more than 60 or 65 degrees. It made for a beautiful, excuse-free day for a run.

I am a heart-rate runner. It is a more consistent measure than running on pace alone since pace highly varies depending on GPS accuracy, and since it is easy to over-exhert yourself trying to maintain a pace when other variables are in play - elevation, heat, hills, etc. For the first half of the marathon, I kept my heart rate at a fairly even 147-148. After that, I wanted to push myself up to about 155 and then, with 4 miles to go I planned on "throwing the hammer down" (as I referred to it in my head, amused) to about 165-170, depending on what was left in the tank. It was especially amusing since my last four miles felt like I was trying to tow a truck and "throwing the hammer down" in reality was just maintaining an 11-minute mile.

What amazes me about marathons are the people who run them. Mainly the ones who run faster than I do. Like the 60-year-old women who run it in three and a half hours. Or the 250-pound cleidsdales that cruise on by down the home stretch. They just blow my mind. Our bodies are just miraculous. That's what I told myself as my hamstrings started to seize and my vision started to blur.

When I burst (kind of) across the finish line, it was amazing. It was almost as surreal as the time I ran my mom's new Jetta into a Hastings signpost or as walking through the Boise airport when I got back from Brazil. I am so happy I decided to do it. I wish I would have won, though.

Montauk or Bust

This weekend I rode my bike to Montauk, which is the city at the end of Long Island. From my house to Montauk is a total of 136 miles, which I covered in a total of 7 hours and 15 minutes at an average speed of 18.25 MPH. I was pleasantly surprised with how well I held up to the distance and speed, especially considering last year I was averaging a max of about 15 MPH on my longer rides. (Boston, Poughkeepsie, Philadelphia, etc.) Granted, the ride to Montauk is almost perfectly flat, which obviously helps the pace, I was still pleasantly surprised.



I enjoyed most all of the ride. The weather left a little to be desired, but that comes with the territory of Long Island in the early spring I think. It didn't rain, but was gray and windy. I probably should do it again in May or June when the trees are blossoming and the family money is out and about. There's just something about getting nudged off the road by a Land Rover that makes me feel special.

The key learnings:

• Montauk is kind of nasty during the first week of April
• Life is better with a tail wind than with a head wind. It's the difference between 23.5 MPH and 15.5 MPH.
• I need a home in the Hamptons. It is the only way I will ever truly be happy.
• Any food tastes good after 136 miles.
• Riding in Manhattan after riding on the peaceful, uninhabited streets of Southampton is stressful. I enjoy riding in the city, but I am sure it is taking years off my life.
• I don't take pictures because when I do I regret having not taken better ones.
• Having the right equipment makes a world of difference.
• Being prepared doesn't always pay off.
• I think I'm a lot cooler than other people do. Really, I think I am like the coolest person in the world. Really. Like almost every mile, I thought to myself, "I'm riding to *Montauk*. How cool is that? Just me and 136 miles of coastal beauty. What a story am I to tell!" But no one really cares all that much. And I'm ok with that.
• Helmet hair looks a lot like homeless hair.

If you have any recommendations on where I should go on my next weekend warrior trip, I am open to suggestions. I am thinking Atlantic City or Scranton. Or maybe San Diego.

How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 3 - The Results

So I am not entirely sure what I was expecting in the results. Well, that’s not true. I knew exactly what I was expecting - 29-for-29. And that previous estimate of 16 to 18? That was obligatory modesty, like when rich people say, “There’s more to life than money.”

Having known myself for 24 years now, I can’t imagine why any reasonable, rational woman wouldn’t jump at a chance to go out with me. According to my daily affirmations, I am devilishly charming, fashionable, suave, unbearably handsome, etc. I sing in the mellifluous tenor of an angel, I am a high-powered public relations executive, I can juggle, I literally could go on for hours.

But I won’t. Instead, I will outline the results. To warn you, they are a bit unsettling:

Total number of girls with whom I met: 29
Total number of girls in whom I was interested: 7
Total number of girls who yesed me: 18
Total number of girls who yesed me that I was interested in: 3

So yes, I hit the modest estimate of 18 yeses. That leaves, however, 11 girls unaccounted for, and, more importantly, 4 girls that I was interested in that were mysteriously omitted from my list. As I said before, unsettling. “Maybe you just weren’t their type” is an empty excuse made for and by people who aren’t yet ready to face reality.

The truth is that most of these 11 girls were omitted from my list due to clerical and administrative errors. I mean the event was well organized, but off the top of my head I can think of three rudimentary organizational oversights.

1. The importance of writing legibly on our name tags was not made clear at the outset. When we wrote our names and numbers on our name tags, we were not told, “Please write in such a manner that people will be able to read them.” I was somewhat careless and let the 3 in my 63 spill over the edge, which meant that it was easily mistaken for a 65 or even a 68. Since my number was really the only way that my yeses were registered, I imagine 10% of my dates were lost to lucky numbers 65 and 68. You’re welcome. We’ll say this accounts for 3 of my non-yeses.
2. The boxes were not in the most-convenient locations. At the end of the event, we were instructed to help ourselves to food and drink, and to put our lists in the boxes. However, no specific instruction was given on the location of these boxes, nor if there were boy boxes and girl boxes. I did notice a considerable confusion as we left the dating arena as people tried to locate the proper receptacles. I would estimate that an additional 10% of all attendees were not able to find the ballot boxes, or threw their lists in the garbage by mistake. Garbage cans are, after all, just large boxes. Another 3 non-yeses accounted for.
3. How to mark “yes” on the lists was ambiguous. The lists that we received has a box above which was written “Yes/no.” I wrote in mine either C or D, which was a code I used to keep track without having to risk my dates seeing my actual number of yeses or nos. (The inside scoop: C was for cat, D was for dog. Before you pass judgment, D was “yes” because I like dogs better than cats.) I saw many people who were just making a check mark or slash in each box. However, a slash is neither a yes nor a no. It is just an annotation. So what if I put slashes through every person I was not interested in, but the organizers thought the opposite was true – that slashes were affirmative responses? An innocent mistake with disastrous results. I would say, in fact, that this confusion spread as far as an additional 10% of participants, accounting for 3 more non-yeses.

In sum, we can reasonably blame 9 of the 11 non-yeses on simple clerical and human error. The other two? Come to think of it, there was one “date” that had me sitting in front of an empty chair, which I did put on my list as “Empty Chair.” The empty chair could not say yes, clearly. And the last one? The last one may have been a girl with such egregiously poor taste in men that she consciously, deliberately marked “no.” Her loss, I assure you.

I look forward to many weekends rich with dates from my yes list. That is to say weekends starting in April after the conclusion of March Madness. I have to keep my priorities straight.

Orange Juice like it should be

Every once in a while I am blown away by developments in the packaging industry. Like 6 or seven years ago, someone decided that instead of selling 12-packs of Coke in boxes stacked on a 2x3 footprint, they would sell them on a 1/6 footprint. At the time, they were labeled "fridge packs," because the packaging fit better into conventional refrigerators, and, more importantly, you could easily access all the cans without tearing the box to pieces. Now all 12-packs are sold in this packaging.

I could go on and on, but I can just think of this one example in recent history. I will make the assertion that these kinds of developments are happening constantly, but I have no idea if it is true.

Yesterday I went to the store for my weekly health-food-and-junk-food shopping trip and picked up a carton of Tropicana orange juice. When I came home, I was giddy with excitement when I went to pour myself a glass.



I am not sure if you can tell what is going on here, but instead of the cap being flat on the top, it is a hemisphere shaped like an orange. How fun is that? Instead of twisting a boring cap, you are twisting diminutive plastic orange. It may seem just like wasted plastic, but I, for one, am now a Tropicana man for life.

The packaging also reads "squeeze, it's a natural" surrounding the cap. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I can't help but giggle at its sexual undertones.

Advisory: My Blog has Changed Names

I changed the name of my blog from "The Nuances of Life" to something that more accurately reflects the content of the blog and that has more substance: "Tony's Blog." I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking when I named it "The Nuance of Life." Although they are important, very few were covered in my posts.

I do not foresee this changing the blog at all, but it is now more honest with itself.

How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 2

So I am now back from the speed dating night hosted by the Manhattan 3rd Ward, and I have to say that overall I was impressed. There were at least 200 people there, split almost evenly between men and women. In fact, there were a few more men than women, which, by Mormon standards, is nothing short of a miracle. My props to the organizers, although my props unfortunately have no cash value.

Each microdate was 3 minutes or 90 seconds long, depending on the flight and fancy of the guy with the whistle. 90 seconds is, consequently, my attention span. Convenient. It is also just about enough time to decide if you like a girl's lips, eyes, and accent. Which are, consequently, all I really care about.

We were given a paper with a number (mine was 63), and a grid with about 30 spaces in which we wrote the name and number of your "date," and whether you would consider to go on a real date with her in the future. At the end, they collected the sheets, compared them go each other, and advised each party of any yes-yes matches. A simple, smart system. That's why I feel kind of bad for abusing it.

There is only one way to find out what each girl thought of me if I "yes" only those I was interested in - 8 of 30, as a point of reference. I would essentially only have a sample size of 8, because only those 8 would be "yes-yes" candidates. In order to increase the sample size to 30, I would have to "yes" all 30, which could make it hard to sort through those who were actual yeses. Unless, of course, I recorded all the genuine yeses separately on a list I kept privately. And that's exactly what I did.

Of course, this was a clear abuse of the system, which probably makes me a bad person. Or just a sucker for data.

I will not go into details about the microdates specifically in order to protect their privacy. Sufficient to say, intimate details changed hands. What I would like to do, however, is make some predictions on a few key outcomes. These predictions are fairly indicative of the evening in general.

L - She will say yes because I wear hipster glasses that make me look cooler than I really am. She would not dare say yes to anyone who was not a cool hipster, or at least had glasses that played the part.

J - She will say no because she knows me well enough to know that she couldn't stand to spend more than 90 seconds with me.

M - She will say no because she was the most attractive girl there, by a wide margin. If she says yes, I have been grossly underestimating how attractive I am to the opposite sex.

R - She will say no because I asked her what she did for a living twice in a 90-second span. Asking someone what they do for a living says, "I am a boring conversationalist." Asking them twice says, "I am a boring conversationalist, and I don't listen to you."

Overall - I estimate that 18 of the 30 will be interested in a date. That may seem high, but I am an optimist. I might as well be an optimist now before I get the results and find out that only 3 could bear me for a real date and be forced into pessimism.

Even if no real dates materialize from this activity, I will at least learn that being rejected hurts, but it hurts like getting hit in the head with a kickball. It stings and leaves a big red mark on your face, but it doesn't do any permanent damage. That's a good lesson, one that most people learn in grade school.

How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 1

I am going speed dating this evening, which is hosted by one of the Manhattan singles' ward. I have never speed dated, although I have seen it done on TV, never with remarkable results. Although I will withhold judgment until later tonight after I am all speed-dated up, I would like to propose a model for fool-proof (read "Tony-proof") speed dates.

The advantage to speed dating over conventional dating is its efficiency. With that in mind, the key has to be total transparency. Going into each micro-date, both man and woman should know everything about each other. So instead of being forced to slowly find out their talents and eccentricities through months of expensive and time-consuming dating, they can cut right to the chase.

I am not just talking about likes and dislikes. Who really cares if my favorite color is green and if I like ponies? The kind of woman that I would never be interested in, that's who. I'm talking about medical records, academic transcripts and bank statements. How many pushups can you do? Does anyone in your family have a history of glaucoma? Do you have weak ankles (which Mark refers to lovingly as "wankles")?

It would, of course, also cover uncomfortable questions that would potentially emerge in the developmental stages of a budding romance. It makes no sense to wait until 6 months in to address these kinds of deal-breakers when you could address them up front. How many children do you want to have? Do you want a TV in the bedroom? Would you ever consider naming your son Tiger Woods Sheehan? In terms of toothpaste tubes, are you a squeezer or a roller?

Each party would be given five minutes to review their documents, then they would be given five minutes to converse, and then they would move on. Based on their impressions from the quantitative and qualitative analyses, they would decide jointly to further pursue a relationship, and whether it would on a long-term or just-for-fun basis.

They would each be required to attend speed dating sessions at a predetermined interval - every three months, for example - to confirm that they are really not interested in pursuing other options. So they would sit through the session, and if they still are most compatible with their current girl/boyfriend, then the relationship can continue. If not, they should try other candidates that they are better matched with. No hard feelings, no tears.

It is undoubtedly the best way. Or so I say prior to my speed dating rendezvous. I'll let you know how I feel in a few hours afterward. My gut tells me it will be something like, "Speed dating is stupid. And girls are stupid. Where's my Xbox?"

If this type of speed dating were common, or even mandatory, time could be spent more productively

A Marathon Post

I am training for the Salt Lake City marathon. Now, I realize that there are a few fundamental logical flaws about that statement – “Why Salt Lake, when you live in New York?” and “But marathons are for athletic types, Tony!” just as a couple of examples. But I am going through with it nonetheless.

The main reason that I am doing it is squarely in line with the assertions outlined in the disgustingly accurate blog StuffWhitePeopleLike.com. Beyond that, I am doing it because (a.) Lance Armstrong did it, (b.) girls do it, and I am not one to be beat by a girl, (c.) training for it is cheap entertainment, (d.) entrance into the New York Marathon is on a lottery basis and (e.) it gives me an excuse to wear running tights.

Although I am far from being ready for the marathon – I am about 1/3 of the way into my training – I have a few observations thus far. I’ll keep it to four for the time being, although I could offer many more. Running gives you way, way too much time to think.

(1.) There are few physical sensations that are more persuasive than having to go to the bathroom. Granted, I have never been water-boarded, which some say is unpleasant, but when you are running and you know you are 5 miles from the nearest bathroom, it is stressful. At the first inkling of tinkling, you start to run both more quickly and more smoothly. It makes life one big cardiovascular potty dance.

(2.) You only meet people who are running faster or slower than you. Everyone who is running at the same pace as you will stay the same distance in front of you or behind you. I’m sure there is a life lesson to be learned in that somewhere.

(3.) 26.2 miles is long. To date, the farthest I have run is 18 miles, and that was actually a 16-mile training run during which I got lost running circles in Brooklyn for 2 miles. Our bodies are remarkable adaptive because I remember when my knees gave out after 3 miles. (That is not a testament to my body specifically, but to bodies in general.) Or maybe it’s just a testament to how much I complain.

(4.) There’s room for improvement. Always. I am looking at finishing the marathon in about 4 hours, 3 hours 45 minutes best-case scenario. That’s chump change by marathon standards. But I won’t be able to run better than that until I’ve run at that pace. It’s like lower-tier mediocrity is a necessary step to upper-middle-tier mediocrity.

I'll try to provide periodic updates on how goes the training. And trying is half the battle.