Purpose

It's December 24th, and I've been excited all day. For the first time in fifteen years, I feel much like I did on Christmas Eve as a child. But it’s not because I can’t wait for Christmas Day. It’s because I can’t wait for New Years Day. Yeah, I can’t wait for the year to be over.

I’m not much for the holidays. I enjoy spending time with friends and family, and giving and receiving gifts is great and all. But as a staunch atheist who believes that the way we mark time is as arbitrary as the turn of a river card, they don’t mean a whole hell of a lot to me. So why am I excited about January First?

Because I’ve hatched a psychotic plan to get Supernova Elite next year in a rather tight time frame, without limiting my play solely to PokerStars. This is something that I’m thoroughly unprepared for. So why do I plan on putting myself through hell for money?

After reading some of Dusty’s blogs and half watching It’s A Wonderful Life for the nineteenth time, I remembered that I’d really like to do some things that help people in my lifetime. And a lot of those things take money. So I’m going to get me some, ASAP. Then I can start my chain of vegan quick food restaurants, open an affordable dojang in this expensive city, and start some sort of scholarship program for the self-educated.

Over the course of my life, I’ve had a hard time motivating myself for long enough to reach much of my potential. I think keeping a sharp eye on what I really want to get done is what I’ve been missing. I don’t believe in god, religion, or even morality, but I do believe in good. And I’d like to do some of it. Quite selfishly, it’s what makes me happy.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

My favorite TV show growing up was Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. I think I was a big fan of the little train that went around the set, but I also liked the whole shoe tying business. There was one lesson that the entire show was designed to teach. Every activity has three parts:

1. Preparation
2. Activity
3. Cleanup

Somehow I failed to internalize this scheme (but I could still probably put a train set together in five minutes). To this day I blast through step 1, and often skip step 3 entirely. I'm trying to work this process into my Samurai Diet. More on this later.

I've recently spent some time working with Jared Tendler, the performance coach. He prescribes a three step process for every activity:

1. Warm up
2. Performance
3. Cool down and review

This process works for poker, golf, music, martial arts, and pretty much whatever else you apply it to. The idea is to prepare yourself to perform at your highest level. Then to perform without second guessing yourself or worrying about improvement. Finally, you extract the lessons from the session and release the activity from the front of your mind. Sound familiar?

Incidentally, both of these outlines are identical to the shape of a good story. I guess it's time to try write my life into a more coherent narrative. Won't you be my neighbor?

Villain's Lament Live at Connolly's Klub

We played a show last weekend in Times Square to a bunch of rowdy Taekwon-Do buddies and other friends. Lauren and I had run over from a TKD demo that we'd performed in, so it was something of a double header. It was a blast. Here are a handful of clips from the show.

Sunshine Suicide, a reprisal of one of the catchier Voice of a Secret tunes:



Villain's Lament, our preponomously titled piece of thrash pop (the song starts at 0:53, after Lauren gets the crowd going):



Venice Is Going Down (it's a song, not a porno):



The Prettiest Card In the Deck, my Thrash Punk ode to dependency, codependency and bad river cards:



Dig, our first effort at a haunting dirge:

Jaywalker

I almost got run over by a shiny red car coming home from a movie the other day. I had been jaywalking, so I wasn't entirely innocent. My first thought upon seeing this shiny red car was how lame it would be to have a shiny red car that couldn't turn into a robot. I've never owned a car, let alone a shiny red one. But when I do finally get my license and the resulting car, it had best be turning into a robot.

The movie was okay, but it fell into the typical sequel traps. More characters and less character. More explosions and less explosiveness. But what can you expect from a movie based on a toy? I guess it's better source material than an amusement park ride. On the plus side, my favorite non-lego toy, jet-fire, was featured in a pivotal role. The character in the movie was an old war plane, but the toy was a futuristic white jet.

I remember saving about twenty dollars to buy the complex toy for myself. It takes a long time to save twenty dollars when you're seven years old. I drove with both of my parents and two of my grandparents in our light blue van with airplane seats to either New Jersey, or White Plains, or some other exo-city location. Yeah, I made that word up. It took me hours to figure out how to transform the plane into a robot, but it was very satisfying once I figured it out. And no, the blue van couldn't turn into a robot. But it had airplane seats and a motorcycle in the back.

Lunch at Wimbledon (or Why Sports Suck)

This match was ridiculous. I wouldn't accuse myself of being a sports writer (and I hope no one else would), but I feel the need to ramble on a bit about what I just saw. Two days after dashing the home crowd's hopes of a Brit winning at the All England Club*, Andy Roddick fell one break shy of delaying Roger Federer's bid to eclipse Pete Sampras's record of fourteen major championships. He did manage to delay it by a few extra hours, and an extra set and a half's worth of games.

How happy was Roger Federer to become the all-time world record holder? He seemed lightly thrilled. But this was one of those matches where you hate to see someone lose, because you know that the pain of loss exceeds the joy of winning. Emotionally, it's a negative sum game (although financially it's quite positive). Andy Roddick should be filled with pride for the level at which he performed. But at the moment, he just looks crushed. And that's why sports suck. Many of the best contests are difficult to enjoy unless you have an over developed sense of schadenfreude. So I offer my heartiest congratulations to both participants for grinding out four and a half hours of the highest quality tennis.

* I noted that Andy Murray was referred to as a Brit before he lost and a Scot afterward. The English are a capricious lot. I'm one of the least patriotic people in the US, but I took a little joy in seeing two American women dominate the singles and doubles final in England on July 4th, not to mention the Bryan brothers reaching the men's doubles final the same day, and American Andy eliminating British Andy the day before.

It should also be noted that if New York were a city-state, like it should be, I would be intensely patriotic.

Breakfast at Wimbledon

I'm eating vegan blackberry pancakes right now and watching Roger Federer attempt to defeat Andy Roddick for his record 15th major title. Many consider this to be the golden age of tennis, largely because of the rivalry between Roger Federer (who any objective individual will hold as the greatest of all time) and his good friend and arch nemesis, Rafael Nadal. Nadal happens to be the greatest clay court player of all time, as well as the only man to defeat Federer in a grand slam final. These two greats played arguably the greatest match of all time in this same final one year ago. But instead of Nadal facing Federer in a rematch of the past three Wimbledon finals, it's Andy Roddick. And while a Roger/Rafa repeat would not be an unfitting way to see history challenged, seeing Roddick across the net makes a certain amount of sense. Roddick has lost more than any other player to Federer's dominance, with a 2 and 18 overall record, including three grand slam final losses.

The Crazy Cat Lady

I visited my mom in Massachusetts last week. I hadn't seen her for over a year, so I was very happy to be there, despite the unfortunate impetus for my visit: her cat had died. She lives in a small town, but there are some nice vegetarian and vegan restaurants. Not totally surprising for a college town. Anyway, there was a little shop on Main Street with a bunch of action figures in the window. It was a rather strange selection:

Van Gogh

Sherlock Holmes

Beethoven

Crazy Cat Lady

Librarian

Edgar Allan Poe

I guess what all of these figures have in common is that they're a bit loopy. I like the Crazy Cat Lady, though, because she comes with six cats of assorted flavors. I don't mean that in an Alf-like way.