Get the latest gossip, notes from the road and studio, and other useless nonsense straight from Josh!

 

Gym Rules

These are the Gym Rules. Period. The reason there aren’t more is that we’ve thought of them all. They’re posted here for you to read and obey. If you disobey the Gym Rules you will be barred from the premises. It’s that simple, people.

1. Talk to each other. You’re here for a social outlet first, health second. Do you think we built this huge building and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment and staff salaries for you to actually work out and get in shape? The answer to this should be obvious. If you are here for less than two hours a day, you’re wasting both our time.

2. Talking should be done loudly. Very loudly. If you have something to say to someone else, it is probably important enough for everyone within earshot to hear. This especially goes for comments on subjects such as what you did last night, what kind of new SUV you’re thinking of buying, news, politics, and personal information about you and your friends (especially juicy gossip about your sexual conquests, and mysterious diseases).

3. We know you know the proper technique for every excercise ever known to humans; make sure you tell everyone who’s not working out correctly what they’re doing wrong. Please remember to emphasize important technical basics like “locking elbows,” “jerking heavy weights,” “partial reps,” “long rest periods.”

4. Make sure you rest long enough between sets. Five minutes or more is an acceptable length. If you only rest 60-90 seconds you’re going to get tired. You don’t want that do you? (See Rule #1.)

5. Please wear proper clothing. Spandex is still made for a reason, people. Show off that body! Come on, modesty is for the Amish.

6. In the locker rooms please remember: Nudity Is Key. The locker room is separate from the rest of the building so that you will have a place to unburden yourselves of those clothes. Take advantage of this special haven. Walk around. Weigh yourself. Watch TV. Start up a conversation with a stranger. Your entire process of brushing your teeth, blow drying and brushing your hair, shaving, cutting your fingernails, trimming body hair, going to the toilet, looking in the mirror at yourself without purpose, folding and arranging your clothes by color (or alphabetically!), and calling home to check on the family can be done naked. You don’t need clothes on until you are absolutely certain you are ready to leave the locker room. (Helpful Hint: If you are leaving the locker room and run into someone you need to talk to, why not just take your clothes off again for that conversation? Who knows how long you could be there.)

7. While working out please make the proper noises. Men should grunt loudly, even yelling when necessary. Women should basically sound like pornstars in mid-coitus. Remember, this is your space: it is impossible for you to be too loud. This just cannot be stressed enough.

8. Men: throw those weights down when finished using them. They’re made of metal. They’re not going to break. Come on, don’t be a weenie.

9. Women: while performing excercise repetitions look around the room, see what’s going on, talk to someone (refer to Rule #1). Whatever you do, don’t strain (refer to Rule 4).

10. Sauna. Steam Room. Whirlpool. (See Rules #1, 2, 4, and 6)

11. Men: put as much weight on that barbell as you can possibly lift. You only have to lift it once, and you’ll look good. (Bulging veins look good too.) (See Rules #3, 4, and 7.)

12. Women: jewelry (espcially large hoop earrings) and makeup should be worn while working out. This may seem antithetical to Rules 5 and 6, but it’s not.

13. A note on aerobics classes: don’t worry about what time the class starts or what the other people are doing, just get there and do your own thing--we’re all moving here, people. (See Rules #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 12)

14. Think of the water fountain as your own personal bird bath. That sweaty head of yours isn’t going to clean itself, silly! And hey, if you can leave a large mucousy phlegm nugget in the water fountain drain when you leave, the next person will really appreciate and enjoy it. Trust us on this one.

15. Mark your territory with your sweat. Think of your sweat as little pools of “liquid gold” that you can leave as a treasure for other members to find.

16. Workout routines are for body builders and professional athletes. Just walk around. You’ll find something heavy to pick up. (See Rules #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12)

17. Mirrors. Need we say more?
posted by Josh at 10:51:00 PM

 

The Smells of Louisiana

I eat Alligator now. It’s pretty good fried, but I like it blackened the best. Grilled is okay too, but the grilled piece I had tasted a little like river water. That may have been a joke the locals in Baton Rouge were playing on the guy from out of town. I don’t know. I had never been to Louisiana before last weekend.

The first thing I noticed about Louisiana was that it has a distinct smell to it. My friend Ben, who is from Baton Rouge, stopped the car at the Louisiana Welcome Center just off I-10. I got out in the rain to go check out the bathroom and the snack machines. Niether were very nice. When I got back in the car I said, “Dude, Louisiana smells weird.” Ben said, “I know.” That was all either of us said about it the rest of the trip. We got back on the interstate, and I picked the guitar up from the back seat and proceeded to make up a song off the top of my head about Sigfried & Roy and a certain tiger and how I had lost my job working for them after leaving off-off-off-Broadway to go work in Vegas. Trust me, you don’t want to hear it.

When we got to Baton Rouge we didn’t even go to the place we were staying--we went straight the The Chimes. The Chimes is a restaurant/bar that has great beer, very cute waitresses, plenty of tv’s all tuned to various sporting events, and strange food that tastes way better than you’d think it would. Everyone in Baton Rouge was crowded into the lobby of the Chimes drinking beer and waiting for a table. I didn’t want to seem like Ben’s lame friend from Atlanta who wouldn’t eat anything and wanted to go to bed at midnight so I put my partying hat on and threw my obsessively healthy diet by the wayside.

I told Ben to order me whatever he wanted me to eat. I made sure I said it really loudly so everyone else at the table could hear how brave I was. They didn’t know that in the car I had laid out strict guidelines about what Ben could order for me. I don’t know whether he followed my guidlines, but here’s what I ate. I ate gator first. Alligator. As in “Oh my god is that an alligator?! I’m sure glad were in this boat.” I remember the sensation in my body right before I put the first piece of gator in my mouth. It was one of those moments in which you know your life is going to be changed forever. My life is now divided into BG and AG. "Before Gator" and "After Gator." I put the piece of gator in my mouth and it was excellent. I had to control myself from eating all of it so everyone else could have some. It made me feel better that everyone else who was there and who, by the way, were all from Baton Rouge liked it too and acted like eating it was normal.

Second I ate seafood gumbo. It smelled like seafood soup. It is seafood soup. It was really really good, even though in my bowl there was a chunk of crab which Ben’s friend Chris made me pick up and suck out all of the meat. It sounds gross I know, but as I soon learned most things in Louisiana sound gross but are in fact really great. I think that’s how they have come up with most of their recipes and traditions.

Last I had crawfish etouffee. It sounds fancy and French, but it’s pretty much like crawfish stew. Ben’s friend Chris told me how to make it and I listened intently, asking questions when appropriate, and just generally acting like cooking crawfish was something that there was a chance in hell I would ever do. Crawfish etouffee was good too. By the way, if you’re in Baton Rouge don’t call crawfish “crawdads” or you’ll get chastised and made fun of for most of the rest of the evening.

I tried to keep up with Ben and his friends from Baton Rouge the rest of the evening. Apparently I don’t drink enough, and apparently in Baton Rouge it’s only cool to drink Abita Amber beer. Now I know. We stayed up at The Chimes until it closed listening to Boudreax and Thibodaux jokes and recipes for etouffee and trying to get the waitress to hang out with us. There is something in the water in Baton Rouge that makes the girls incredibly beautiful and incredibly sassy. Other things may or may not have happened the rest of the evening. I am not at liberty to discuss these matters.

The next day, which to be honest with you was just a sleepless continuation of the night before, we went to the LSU football game. All day people basically just dressed like insane high school football coaches in purple coaching shorts, ate more weird food, drank tons of beer, and yelled and screamed about LSU kicking University of Florida’s asses. One of Ben’s friends got absolutely wasted and screamed at me most of the first part of the game because I wasn’t cheering enough. There was nothing I could do to convince her that I truly did want LSU to win the game. It was really quite abusive. LSU lost and all of Ben’s friends blamed it on me because it was my first LSU football game and I was from out of town. I don’t think I’m welcome back there.

We drove back to Atlanta on Sunday and tried to stay awake by listening to only the good songs on almost all of the CDs I had brought and by arguing ferociously about everything whether we actually cared about it or not. When I got home, my roommates’ kid had Scarlet Fever. Scarlet Fever isn’t a big deal anymore, but it is a little weird living with someone who has an illness that killed a lot of the Pioneers. I’m glad to be home, but I’m craving gator....
posted by Josh at 9:20:00 PM

 

My big fat Jewish Rosh Hashanah

They’re trying to refrigerate the Jews of West Hartford, Connecticut. I can’t believe how cold it is in this synagogue. I am wearing a suit, and I’m freezing. I see rows of families huddling together to try to keep warm. The guy in front of me has frost on his yamica.

I’m hungry too. I could really go for some of the food we had last night. My cousin Nancy made great smelling food that we all agreed made the house smell really Jewish. If you’ve ever smelled brisket you know what I mean. The family meal was crazy. The meal was eaten among the normal family conversation:

“Jim, I really want to move to New York City.”
“You do, huh?”
“Yeah, but there’s no place for my mother there.”
“Yes there is--the Hudson.”

And so on. The brisket was referred to as bris-kay, and the salmon was referred to as sal-mon, pronounce the “L.” These were jokes, I think. The matzah ball soup was good, but my other cousins all made fun of Nancy for making the matzah balls too hard, asking if anyone had a chisel.

We had debates about English grammar and usage as I’m sure all families do at their gatherings. We made completely useless predictions about the World Series. Everyone revealed way too much about their personal lives. We tried to remember camp songs and sang them very loudly at the table.

If there was a lull in conversation, we would just start explaining things. There are two ways to explain things if you are Jewish. Anytime anyone asks a question about anything at all the explanation is the same: “You see, when the Jews were wandering in the desert...” OR “You see, when the Jews were in slavery in Egypt, the Pharaoh....” This can answer every question from “Why do I have to eat this matzah?” to “Why is cousin Josh like that?”

The rest of the weekend my cousins and I go out to nice restaurants and order expensive food and expensive drinks and act like comeplete idiots, if at all possible including the waitstaff and any restaurant patrons within earshot. It makes me feel somewhat relieved that all the times I’ve done this without them weren’t inexplicable anomalies of my spastic personality but are a product of my genetics. My cousins are absurdly generous to me the rest of the weekend. I like to think I’m this way too, but I’m probably not.

Back in the cold synagogue the hair products in my hair have frozen solid, giving me a new version of the hair helmet look. I try to think of other things, like the flight home. I probably shouldn’t think of flying because it makes me nervous. I try to think of which would be worse: dying in a plane crash, or freezing to death with a bunch of rich Jews in a synagogue in Connecticut. I can’t decide.

The flight to Connecticut from Atlanta--by way of Detroit, Cleveland, Phoenix, and Calcutta of course--was actually fairly uneventful. The takeoff was a little shakey and rough and I thought we were all going to die, but when we got up above the clouds everything smoothed out. Even if you’re freaked out about being up that high you have to admit it’s an amazing view. I always think of the Ellis Paul song that goes “Ain’t it a beautiful world / soft as a pearl / bring on the changes / ain’t it a beautiful world.”

I usually try to distract myself from the flight, but this time I felt pretty good. I had tried in the Cleveland airport to distract myself by reading an exhibit called “The History of Adhesives.” It was about as interesting as you’d imagine it to be. During the flight I read the rest of Less Than Zero, which wasn’t about synagogue temperatures in West Hartford, but was about as depressing. I made a little baby laugh who was a couple rows up from me on the plane. The plane was unbelievably small. If I reached my arms out to each side I could have touched both wings at the same time. I didn’t do this, of course, fearing causing some sort of aerodynamic catastrophe. As we landed and I calmed down, I had the feeling of settling to earth, as if I’d been inside a big long shake-up snow toy, like the ones you get in tourist shops.

The service is almost over. I've been sitting on my hands for thirty minutes and am starting to be able to feel my fingers again. The Rabbi speaks in Hebrew and I understand much less than I probably should. I imagine the translation in my head: "God, and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, you are a warming God...."

posted by Josh at 6:32:00 PM

 

Scared little boy whines about fear of dying in fiery plane crash

6:03pm
Flying to New York City tomorrow. Love New York. Hate the planes. Need to learn love for all things, planes included. Doing okay with learning to love extremely closed-minded, stubborn, mean, vindictive, stupid people. Not doing so okay on loving planes. Must focus on crew of plane as surely must be someone on crew who is extremely closed-minded, stubborn, mean, vindictive, or stupid who I can love. Will start with crew. Yes.

6:08pm
Wondering if extremely closed-minded, stubborn, mean, vindictive, stupid crew member will really be okay to operate multi-ton airliner. Fears not abating. Feeling the love for the person behind the job which will lead to my death in fiery crash, but not so loving idea of dying in fiery crash. Must focus harder.

6:12pm
Make call to dad to seek guidance about plane problems. Leave message on machine saying I'm interested in knowing great places to eat in NYC, knowing dad will be fooled into calling me back quickly and can blindside him with irrational fear of dying in fiery plane crash. Waiting for call back.

6:29pm
Still no call back from dad. Must be something wrong as has been 17 minutes and no call. Considering calling 911--maybe they'll know about planes.

6:37pm
Eight minutes later still no call. Tried to distract self with packing but seems meaningless as will be dying in fiery crash and all will be incinerated. Seems a waste to incinerate best clothes in fiery crash.

6:38pm
Reconsidering packing option. Must consider possbility of being found partially incinerated in crash wreckage and don't want to be found dead in bad clothes.

6:43pm
Still no call from dad.

6:45pm
Still no call from dad. Phone still working.

6:47pm
What the HELL! Come on Dad! This is important--oh, phone ringing...

7:29pm
Dad doesn't fall for phony line of NYC restaurant questions. I tell him about plane hatred. He says I must learn to love all things. I say I know. Even planes, he says. I know, I say. He tells me to think of plane as riding bus. This doesn't help as very large metal bus has as much business flying at 25000 feet as very large metal plane. I tell him planes are the bumblebees of transportation world, not supposed to be able to do that, freaks of nature, and so on. He says but bumblebees fly. But they're not supposed to, I say. But they do, he says, and they hardly ever crash. Bees, I ask? No planes, he says. Oh, I say. Still am not comforted. Dad is rational, quotes very low statistics of dying in fiery crash. Tells me all will be fine and to bring Miles Davis CDs and chill. I tell dad I will do that and hang up, even though would never take Miles Davis CDs as do not want them to be incinerated in fiery crash. Feel bad about lying to dad. Dad too rational anyway, need over-emotional person to whine to. Will call mom.

7:43pm
Call mom. Tell her of plane problems. She says she's watching Cedric The Entertainer and can she call me back. I say okay. Mom no help.

7:44pm
Call brother Adam. Tell him of plane problems. He laughs and hangs up without saying anything. Am going to die charred with strangers in stratosphere and none of my family members care.

7:58pm
Nothing happening. There are 31 slats on venetian blinds on window in room.

8:05pm
Eighties show just came on radio. Playing Rick Springfield's "Human Touch." Am getting choked up. Need to get a life.

10:53pm
Have been on bed listening to eighties show all night and have barely thought about dying in fiery crash. Starting to love planes a little. Just heard Starship's "We Built This City." Loving Starship. Starship not unlike plane. Thinking all is going to be okay. If I die will be wearing favorite shirt and clean underwear. Good start. Must pack....

posted by Josh at 12:10:00 AM

 

Old Lady 1, Josh 0

I was at the grocery store yesterday at a time I usually don’t go. I was in a hurry and was walking really fast through the produce section, grabbing things I needed as they came to my head: one broccoli crown, one onion, five mushrooms, four roma tomatoes, seven stalks of kale. My philophy being if I didn’t think of it immediately I probably didn’t need it bad enough. I was going for speed, not accuracy.

So I’m flying through the produce section throwing random amounts of vegetables in my basket, and I move on down the bread aisle toward the loaves of bread at the end. I’m walking pretty fast and trying to pass an old lady with a grocery cart. I saw the lady come in when I did. Her basket looked like she’d been through the produce section already, but I don’t remember seeing her. I start to pass her. She speeds up. I speed up. Is she trying to race me? I should say at this point that this woman had to have been about 75 years old easy, and she couldn’t have been over five feet tall. Okay, so I’m trying to pass her to get to the bread at the end of the aisle and I have to walk almost as fast as I can just to pass her in time.

I grab the first loaf I see and glance back over my shoulder. The old lady already has a loaf of bread. She’s turning onto the next aisle ahead of me. I decide to skip that aisle, thinking I can do without cookies and fruit juices. I decide, in fact, to skip most of the next seven aisles, skipping right to the toothpaste. I grab my toothpaste. I leave the Health & Beauty aisle. As I’m turning out onto the main aisle at the back of the store, I see the old lady turn in one lane ahead of me at the front of the store onto the frozen foods aisle. My heart races. I switch basket hands. I zip up my jacket and head straight for the refrigerated section, a jump of almost ten aisles.

I grab yogurt and half a dozen eggs and make for the checkout, walking as fast as I can possibly walk without running and looking like I’ve stolen something. I look back over my shoulder. No old lady. A smile creeps across my lips for a moment before I tell myself to get serious. I weave in and out of the shoppers, mothers with their children, bachelors aimlessly reading every label and price tag.

I am almost to the checkout when it hits me--PASTA! I forgot pasta. I can’t do without pasta. I look across the long row of cash registers and don’t see the old lady. I start to run. I run almost full speed to the pasta aisle. I grab the first pasta I see. Angel hair. I look around. No old lady.

I run back to the cash registers. Only three lanes are open. The shortest line is in the farthest lane from me. One person is there checking out, but I can’t see who. I am sweating and out of breath. I sprint the final twenty-five feet to the checkout line. As I stop, the pasta and a carton of yogurt fall out of my basket, which I accidentally banged against the counter. I bend over to pick up the pasta and yogurt, and as I stand back up the person ahead of me finishes paying. I look up. It’s the old lady. She walks to her cart, which she is allowing a young bag boy to push out to her car. I am frozen in my tracks. A bead of sweat rolls off my nose. I can taste sweat on my lips. The cashier asks me for the third time, “Can I help you, hun?” I put my basket onto the counter and keep my eyes on the old lady. Just as she exits the door she looks back over her shoulder, and I swear I see her grin a sly sliver of a grin.

I pay the cashier. I take my groceries out to my car and sit in my car. It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. It’s misty but not cold out. Cars enter and exit the parking lot, tires hissing on the damp pavement. I take note of it all. I will be back everyday at this time. I will meet her again. And next time I will win. If it’s the last thing I do, I will win.
posted by Josh at 12:06:00 AM