Nine Hundred & Ninety Nine Revolutions per Minute

All this “sand nigger” talk (c.f. Taylor Chapman’s Dunkin’ Donuts rant) has made me kind of jealous that racists never got around to giving us Asians our own ‘n-word’. Hello, racists! We’re non-people too!

I suggest “rice niggers”. Then I started thinking: why aren’t Australian aborigines called “kangaroo niggers”? Really, nigger has a thousand household uses.

Why not “igloo niggers” for the Inuit? Mexicans could be “bean nigg-
Oh. I guess that sounds too much like “bee nigger”. Technically, since I’m half black and half yellow, *I* would be classified as a “bee nigger”.

Of course, once you’ve opened that door, we can get to the folks who truly deserve the word: white people. We could call Frenchmen called “Brie niggers”, Germans are totally “sausage niggers”, Canadians would be “maple niggers” only because “universal health care niggers” is really too much of a mouthful to scream from a passing pickup truck window.

I wrote a thing for Yahoo TV here. Turns out it was WAY too mean, so I reined in my antipathy for the show and rewrote it. Here’s the original version (but go read the Yahoo version first so they’ll pay me to keep doing this):

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9. Celebrities shouldn’t be high-diving for the same reason a 12-yr. old shouldn’t down a bottle of tequila and some pills on Cinco de Mayo: it takes years of training no matter what Greg Louganis (or, in the case of tequila, Amanda Bynes) says. The BEST you can hope for is just to be humiliated:

8. You will, no doubt, recognize this most traditional of dives - the 1½ somersault with a sit:

It’s a dive known as “betrunkenen Deutsch” or “the drunk German”:

7. It takes a lot of cajones to put a 400+ lb. man on a high-diving board. I hear the producers are working on Stephen Hawking for season 2.

6. At least some contestants are making the most of their time. Chuy Bravo is seen here auditioning for the role of Peter Pan; watch your back, Cathy Rigby.

5. You know who needs to be taken down a peg? Noted philanthropist and beloved Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabaar! How about we put him in a sport where the average athlete is A FOOT AND A HALF SHORTER than he is?

4. Oh, did we mention he’s 65? Take that, old people!

3. What’s the only thing worse than stumbling off a diving board in front of millions of people watching on TV? Try doing it with your mother poolside:

2. If you don’t watch pro wrestling, you can be forgiven for not knowing what this next thing is called. It’s a crucifix powerbomb: it’s something you only do when you’re a 300 lb. dude with a beard and you only do it to other 300 lb. dudes (beard optional).

You DO NOT do it to a 115 lb. Miss Alabama and you CERTAINLY don’t do it from a height that would make the guy who jumped out of a balloon from low Earth orbit pee in his spacesuit.

1. The next time you forget your neighbor’s name on the street or fart in an elevator or your parents chaperone your prom, know that your embarrassment will never ever ever EVER be worse than this.

Ever.

I’m not a runner, never have been. I’m short, I’ve got stubby legs and I’ve got the lung capacity of someone whose chief hobby was once smoking cigarettes and roleplaying as a professional wrestler on the Internet. To be any more sedentary, I would have had to had Carrie Fisher chained to my neck and Harrison Ford mounted on my wall.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be getting up at 3:30 to run a half-marathon. 13.1 miles.

After I had started training, by chance, I asked the moms what she once hoped I would grow up to be. She said a track star which surprised the shit out of me. (Well, insofar as the specifics go; that I was a disappointment didn’t surprise me in the least.) She’d always been a runner, but, as previously established, my preference is for activities best performed on a sail barge.

The moms’ birthday is tomorrow, so let’s call this halfie a birthday present for her.

When I started ten weeks ago, I could barely run two miles on a treadmill*. But, turns out it’s not so bad when all you’re doing is adding one more mile every week. One by one, it adds up to 13.1 miles.

Turns out it’s not so bad when you don’t set unreasonable standards for yourself. I’m not going to run a six-minute mile. I’m not going to run a ten-minute mile. But I am going to run 13.1 miles.

Turns out it’s not so bad when you have a bunch of other people running with you. I found Alpha Running on LivingSocial and ran every Saturday with a bunch of other people, many of whom were in the same position as me. It’s a pretty good feeling to be there with a bunch of other people who also never thought they’d be running 13.1 miles.

Trying to make it in LA is pretty tough some** of the time. It’s a town built on rejection. Even if you’re doing well, you’re still getting turned down 95% of the time. It’s nice to be able to succeed on your own terms and it’s nice to be able to do it with a bunch of people who are just as clueless (but game) as you are.

Kinda like improv.

So if you’re in one of those frequent funks that artists face, feeling worthless, crushed by the world, needing to regain a little agency in your life; might I recommend Alpha Running? A half-marathon seems insane, but really all it is is one long run on Saturday and two 30-minute runs during the week.

Hell, even if you don’t wanna do that (or if you live somewhere that’s not LA***), put on a pair of shoes and go run two miles tomorrow. Send me a text and I’ll keep on you to do 3 miles next week. A month from now, I’ll show you the beach route, which is, no shit, one of the best experiences you can have in Los Angeles.

I was going to post something like this tomorrow after the race proper. But I’ve got a $9 bottomless mimosa waiting for me afterwards, so, like I used to say: “Makingsa lee ka bok bagthra, beeska chata wnow kong bantha poodoo.†”

* I also discovered running on the road is WAY harder than a treadmill because the road doesn’t whip itself along underneath you.

** all

*** I’m told, for some reason, those places still exist

† “You may have been a good smuggler, but now you’re bantha fodder.”

I get it, I get it - this frigging limey show is FIFTY years old! You can’t look at two unwatched episodes of “Robot Chicken” on the DVR without feeling overwhelmed. It’s cool. Trust me. Here’s all you need to know to start watching the show on Saturday:

1) This is the Doctor. He is a madman with a box.

2) The thing behind him is the box. It’s called a TARDIS. It can go anywhere and any time. It tends to land places where there are problems that can be solved in 45-50 minutes.

3) This is his companion, Oswin. The Doctor keeps companions around because snappy dialogue isn’t nearly as snappy when it’s delivered to a volleyball.

The companions are a diverse group, but tend to be pretty,

spunky,

and, occasionally, series regulars on “The Office”*.

4) Matt Smith plays the 11th Doctor. Don’t worry about it - each new Doctor is essentially a reboot. There are references and recurring creatures (Daleks, Cybermen, an oversexed John Barrowman), but not knowing what “pon farr” is didn’t stop you from enjoying the Hulk** blowing up Thor’s starship in the new “Star Trek”, right?

5) This is the 10th Doctor, played by David Tennant. He’s my favorite and, if you have a friend trying to convince you to watch the show, most likely, they’ll start you with the episode “Blink”, which is one of Tennant’s episodes.

6) Christopher Eccleston was the 9th Doctor, the first of the “New Who” that revived the series in 2005. He also plays Destro in the G.I. Joe movie. That’s not relevant, I just like pictures of Destro.

7) It’s a family show in the way Pixar movies are family movies. If the Pixar movies were directed by Guillermo del Toro. It’ll tickle your brain in those places of childlike wonder, then wander over the lizard part of your brain and pump it full of enough nightmare fuel to keep you awake until they give “Cars” an Oscar.

Which, by the way, is not at all a bad thing for kids. Fairy tales used to be stories designed to ease children into the real world. Coddle your kids too much, and they come out like this:

8) Words words words. If you like banter, this is the show for you. The Doctor will inundate you with the technobabble that you’ve come to expect from modern sci-fi, but it’s not above sending up that same trope with phrases like, ”wibbly wobbly, timey wimey … stuff.”

9) Swashbuckling! There’s a lot of murder and explosions in today’s gritty action shows. Whatever happened to derring-do? The Doctor is basically Indiana Jones, only instead of a bullwhip, he has a Sonic Screwdriver. And a bow tie instad of a fedora***. Also a time/dimension/space-hopping police box.

10) “I don’t get it. He’s the same guy? But played by different people? I could never buy into such a ridiculous premise.”

11) There’s an episode called “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship”.

12) There’s an episode called “Let’s Kill Hitler”.

13) THERE’S AN EPISODE CALLED “DINOSAURS ON A SPACESHIP”.

14) The thing that really makes the show special is not that it’s the best show on television, but that it’s the ONLY show like it on television. It’s not afraid to be silly one moment and deeply moving the next. It’s got lessons, but it’s not preachy. Most of all, it’s FUN to watch with other people. So do that Saturday; find some friends and do it. You can thank me Sunday*****.

* It’s fun to imagine the quasi-omnipotent Donna changing her name and moving to Scranton to grief a small-time paper company. There’s nothing in the canon to suggest that this isn’t actually the case.

** The first Hulk. Well, technically, the second if you include Lou Ferrigno’s TV movies. WHICH I DO.

*** You could argue that Smith’s signature hat, the fez, is a better comparison here. You would be wrong.

**** SCIENCE FACT: Think of the biggest number you can. Go on. Okay, now multiply that by two. Add a few more zeroes to it. Got it? Add that to the number of atoms in the universe and that’s still not as many as there are Doctor Who gifs on Tumblr.

***** When you’re watching “Game of Thrones”. This is a good weekend to be a nerd.

What’s that? Petabyte is a unit of storage space? So the conversation I overheard was about a very large computer file and not…

Well, then I apologize for telling the Homeowners Association you were a child molestor.

And this burning cross on your lawn. In retrospect, there were better ways of handling the situation.

Can I borrow your hose to…? No? Alright, I’ll just, uh … Yeah, I’ll go.

Again, very sorry. I just heard “peta” and “file” and I- Of course, I completely understand. I’ll, uh … I’ll leave now.

Hey, remember when we used to create sitcoms around stand-up comedians, then we created reality shows around celebrities, then we created reality shows around people who became celebrities because they were on a reality show and then, finally, NBC just started showing live feeds of us in our houses jerking off to animated GIFs on the Internet?

“Kim Kardashian and Kanye Will Be ‘Great Parents,’ Snooki Predicts” -an actual headline I read today

“Glenn Beck Calls Alex Jones a ‘Crazy Person’” -an actual headline I read today

“Bear Mauls Young Boy for Shitting in Woods. ‘Disgusting’ Says Ursine Assailant” -headline I expect to read by end of business today