Pet Cobra

40/40: I Get Snipped, And Live To Tell The Tale

(ATTENTION, MEN WHO HAVE NOT YET HAD THEIR VASECTOMIES AND THEIR WIVES. PLEASE HAVE THE UNFIXED HUSBAND READ THIS POST ALOUD TO THE WIFE, BEGINNING WITH THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH.)

We begin the New Year with such high expectations. Months ago I began this series, documenting these small acts of intellectual and physical curiosity, things I wanted to have under my belt by the time I hit 41. One thing I didn't want to have under my belt: viable sperm. And so I scheduled a vasectomy, to be performed in the early days of January 2010.

40/40: The Inquisition. Let's Begin.

An underlying motif of my quest: Not Looking, Feeling, Or Acting My Age. 40 is a morbid milepost in a man's life. If he is lucky, he's reached the halfway point; the Mortal Coil is 50 percent unwound. Statistically speaking, that halfway point is probably in his rearview mirror. And if you don't think that graying men buy sports cars to symbolically outrun that Great Gettin' Up Mornin', well...

I put the 40/40 List on the backburner: Lucas started kindergarten a few weeks ago, and the run-up to that was draining. There were crayons and glue sticks and boxes of granola bars to stockpile. Visits to the pediatrician and dentist. I was trying to maintain a Zen-like approach: take each thing as it comes, don't freak out that your little boy is beginning a huge new phase in his life, what will be will be. And all the while a great wind kept pushing my fat ass across the sky. I was getting weaker. Flabbier. Atrophying. And I was Unmotivated. The bane of junior high soccer coaches everywhere - Unmotivation. I could go for a run...or, OR, I could eat cold spaghetti with meat and bacon sauce with a side of Smokin' Cheddar BBQ Doritos. Or I could do neither and just sit there and think about eating or exercising or the time that I enjoyed both. I was in the Doldrums. The Horse Latitudes. The Seas of Sloth-Related Cliches.

"We should do a Pilates class together," Beth suggested. Ah! This was on the List! "Do a Pilates class." I could write about it! It would be good for me! Physically and mentally! A mind-body experience, just like Joseph Pilates intended! And a tax write-off! Sign me up!

Oh, the enthusiasm of the yet-to-be tortured.

We arrived at the studio and were greeted by our instructor; she showed me the unique machines that we'd be using for our workout. They look like this. I looked at them and saw this. "Do I need a safeword?" I whispered to Beth. "Mine will be 'rhubarb'".  Our instructor, who, by the way, is an incredibly fit woman, told us to lie down on one of the machines (I believe it was the one called The Reformer, or maybe it's The Widowmaker). "We'll start off easy", she smiled, the relaxed smile of one who is incredibly fit. "I work out",  I said to no one in particular. "Lift weights, run, surf, that sort of thing." The instructor smiled sadly at me. "Let's begin by pushing with the legs, keep your spine in a neutral position, and press your abs down..." "Rhubarb!", I grunted.

For the next hour, I was bent, twisted, stretched, and contorted in ways that Decency prevents me from fully describing. Pilates is resistance training; the machines use springs and your body weight, and just about every exercise involves using your upper and lower abs and obliques in one way or another. It's a devious workout, in that you don't really notice how difficult it is until some 30 minutes into it, when your gut muscles realize what's going on and send a message to your brain: "Hey! Shithead! Up until now the only exercise we usually get is Expansion By Pizza/Beer. What's with this Gymkata stuff?" And then various parts of you begin to shake uncontrollably; I was quivering like late 1990's Katherine Hepburn doing her best imitation of 1957 Elvis. And all the while, the incredibly fit instructor smiles while having you do things that I suspect are violations of the Geneva Convention. (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapons are fear, surprise, a fanatical devotion to the Pope, and making hapless schmucks like you do Planks until your arms are ripped from their sockets!) When the hour concluded, I was light-headed and drenched in sweat.

The next day, I felt like I'd been beaten with broom handles.

And here's the thing - it felt good. I had worked muscles that had been ignored since my serious Rock Climbing days. I was in pain, but it was a good pain, the kind earned from pushing yourself in ways that you didn't think possible. So I'll continue doing Pilates. And maybe I'll get to the point where I'll be able to do this - ouch.

40/40: Tryin' Hard to Look Like Gary Cooper

I pride myself on my tales of  Outdoor Badassery. Slept in a snow cave during an Alaskan blizzard? Done that. Solo-backpacked the entire rim of Yosemite Valley? Been there.  Scaled Joshua Tree rock walls so hot that one could fry an egg on them? Yep. 

The thing is, those things were done years - lifetimes - ago. Nowadays, I'm still a lover of all things nature-y, but frankly I'd much rather enjoy the experience while I'm doing it. The thing with the hardcore outdoor sporting stuff is that yes, it's fun in a sick, masochistic way, and only the full-blown lunatics find it relaxing. The novelty of, say, diving into your truck at 2:00 a.m. to avoid the pack of coyotes that is tear-assing through your campsite wears off at a certain point. In fact, I realized that my idea of Getting Away From It All has 360'ed over the past couple of years - I'm now a big fan of  fancy hotels. Give me The Se' in downtown San Diego, The Standard in L.A., The Riviera in Palm Springs anytime. 

We recently returned from a vacation and a Vacation in Colorado. The vacation: driving (two days) to the town of Dillon, there to spend a few days with my sis and her family. It was good times. We went boating,  hiked up some montains, saw some sights, and generally relaxed while all of the kids did kid things, like throw rocks into a stream. I'm pretty sure the sure could have done this for days, and every thrown rock would still contain a lifetime's worth of excitement.  So sure, in fact, that I'm meeting with a group of investors and we're going to build an amusement park, and it will be the most cost-effective amusement park ever - a mile long ditch, filled with water, rimmed with piles of rocks, $10, all you can throw. Like I said, good times. Except that it wasn't 100% relaxing, because we stayed in a condo owned by people they knew, and had to clean, and on a couple of occasions actually cooked. So we'll say 95% relaxing. We decided to extend our trip a day, and thus, had a Vacation along with our vacation. Here. Sproing!  And thus, another item struck from my 40/40 List: stay at a Ritz-Carlton.

40/40: Shaken, Not Stirred

This one came about as a result of a groin injury. I've never had a groin injury before - lucky, really, what with the rock climbing and the rugby and the surfing and the running. It took me a couple of hours of "what the hell is this new pain?" to realize what it was. I don't even know how I got it - my guess would be from surfing the day before. The sad part was that I didn't even surf, not technically - I took Beth out, and sat on my board, giving her some coaching while she tried to catch some waves. (It was mixed up, with a pretty nasty south-to-north longshore current that made paddling a bitch; impossible for even a good surfer to do much.) My first groin injury came at 40 years of age. That's something, I suppose.

I hobbled around for most of the day and once the kids were asleep, decided that we needed to finish off the day with a couple of cocktails. In one of those happy confluences of events, Beth had picked up a container of lychees from Trader Joe's. Lychees are one of those weird foods that you'd never think of buying...unless you were entertaining the possibility of making lychee Martinis. 

40/40: Mustache

38. Grow A Mustache. For details, read the full story here. And don't worry - it's coming off.

40/40: Ouch.

Artists are eccentric. I don't think I'm perpetuating stereotypes here; they operate on a different and usually pretty interesting level. Art is the unfiltered result of a mind trying to interpret a piece of the world, and whether that takes shape in words, sculpture, drawing, or painting, the artist usually won't get the results he or she wants without some sort of disconnect with the way the rest of us see and feel things. 

I say "usually", because my particular artist, the one I'd asked to create a piece for me, took what I'd told him - a vision of waves, incorporating the names of my kids - and got it exactly right. He saw what I saw. And so when I went to his studio, it was with great anticipation and more than a little dread. I was excited to watch him work, to watch him create art. And I knew it was going to to hurt like a motherfucker.

40/40: I Make My Own Lox

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. My 40/40 List began with breakfast. I was jonesing for lox; salty, fishy, buttery lox, atop cream cheese, atop a bagel. Occasionally, my lust for lox flares up like a Vulcan's pon farr; like Spock, I am born of two worlds, and my Jewish half gets these cravings, which can only be sated through consumption or single combat. The problem: I live in the uber-Christian stretch of north coastal SD, where the Chosen and their delicacies are rare. Also, I'd probably go to jail if I killed someone with a big Space Axe. My in-laws live up in the Valley, where there are real delis and kosher markets, but the logistics of going up there to grab some lox for breakfast were a bit daunting. A four hour drive through L.A. rush hour traffic and back seemed a bit impractical, and by impractical I mean Glenn Beck Crazy. (I'm telling you, Paul Giamatti ought to play him in the movie.) The solution: by Yahweh, I'd make my own!

40. Lox

I consulted various tomes: the Torah, the Talmud, the Dead Sea Scrolls, even the tablets of the Ten Commandments (the trick is, don't look in the Ark when you're opening it). None of these contained a decent lox recipe. Thank God for the Internet. A quick Google search revealed dozens of pages laying out detailed instructions for creating a batch of lox. It's not terribly difficult. 

1. Get some salmon filets.

2. Put a bunch of kosher salt on them.

3. Wrap them in plastic.

4. Stick them in the fridge and leave them for 12 hours or so.

5. Remove plastic, rinse off the salt, slice, and eat.

Oh, you're supposed to flip them once. And that's it. That's all you do. You don't skin it, you don't actually smoke the fish, you don't need to get a rabbi to bless it with the Magic Ingredient of God's Approval. People pay $15 a pound for the stuff. I got two filets - a pound total - for $5. 

But before I start opening Jack In The Lox franchises, I should tell you how the stuff came out. It looked OK:

Actually, it looked exactly the same as it did before the salt was applied. And it didn't taste awful. It wasn't as good as the lox one might find at Milton's or Jerry's Famous Deli - if I'd have bought the salmon from a real fishmonger instead of the local Ralph's, it would have been better. It tasted like salty raw fish. I happen to like salty raw fish, so mission: accomplished. No intestinal parasites as of this writing, but if they appear, I'll be sure to get some pictures and post 'em.

40/40

Today I turn 40. I will be celebrating my 40th birthday by reading the eulogy at my grandmother's funeral. I had a few notions as to how my 40th birthday - the actual day - was going to go down. This was not one of them. You would think that I'd be depressed over this. I'm not. It's a wholly unexpected gift; for my birthday, I get to do something that matters, to pay tribute to someone who shaped my life in ways that I'm only just beginning to fully appreciate. Yeah, I'm reminded of my mortality. But, really - have you seen my picture? Read any of my blog posts? Do I look/act 40? My grandma listened to Phish and the Dead and was taking trips to Hawaii in her 80's. 40 is a number. It's as relevant to me as my hair and eye color. Still, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a wee bit reflective this week. Mortality's been on my mind.

So over the course of my 40th year, I'm going to be working off my 40/40 List. 40 things that I want to have accomplished by the time I hit 41. Nothing grandiose - I will not be attempting to scale The Nose on El Capitan. I won't go skydiving. Fuck that. I want to live a long life, one that doesn't end with me plummeting through the roof of a barn tugging desperately at a nonfunctioning ripcord, and I want to stuff that life full of things. Just things. For instance, I've never eaten steak tartare. Or walked the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. I've never played golf. That seems odd - I'll watch Tiger Woods whenever he's on TV, but I've never played a round of golf. I haven't read War and Peace. Or watched an entire episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've never surfed at night. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that a while back Beth and I had an argument about whether or not it's possible for an Average Joe to make honest-to-God cheese at home; thus, cheese-making is on the list. I've never had really, really expensive  - you know, like $120 a shot - tequila. Ok, that seems kind of stupid. But still. Can you imagine being on your deathbed and thinking, damn, you know what would have been nice? That $120 shot of tequila. I'll do that one last.