Racing, radio, and anime...

Over the last 3 to 4 weeks, work has been a pain in the ass for the most part. Long days, followed by longer days, followed by even longer days. It’s just no good, and leaves little time for play in the evening. Therefore, riding has taken a very large back seat to everything else revolving in this little thing we call life. The training has suffered, and I’ve lost pretty much all of the fitness that I accumulated early on this year. Actually, which wasn’t a whole lot, because I’ve been unable to string together more than a week of good training at a time this year. And then I wonder why I can’t seem to compete even on the same level that I did last year. It’s really no wonder at all. In order to ride competitively at the Pro 1-2 level in cycling, you need to ride. A lot. Well, at least for me. This year, I’ve been unable to do that, and my racing has suffered. I got very discouraged pretty much at the end of May, and decided to take off June and most of July to train, and get back on it. So now I face an upward battle for the most part, and I’m starting back off at phase 1. Base mileage again. Long slow miles to get the riding back in the legs, and to maybe take off a few pounds of blubber that is now plaguing my mid section. This is what I get for not riding much, and eating a little too well. But hey, that’s life, and shit like that happens sometimes. I’m sure I’ll swing back by the end of July, when the Crossroads series of races come about. I’m looking forward to that stuff already, which is what I predict would be my, hopefully, semi-triumphant return to racing. I’m also hoping that with the time off I’ve had or will have in the middle of summer here, I’ll do some cyclocross racing again in the Fall, which is something I’ve not done in a few years. I have a cross frame, sitting in my room, waiting for components to grace it’s nakedness. I should be able to cobble something together by the time October rolls around I would hope. Then I can go out there, and get my ass kicked in that discipline as well.

What is the deal with radio stations these days anyway? Anything that you tune into, at least in the Raleigh NC area, sucks. I mean, it’s just bad. Really bad. Luckily, we have NPR, but you can only take so much of that and hear the same news stories throughout the day. There is another talk radio station out of Greensboro, which I’ll tune into sometimes just for the fun of it, because they have a shit-ton of right wing talk shows on there, which either infuriate me, or just make me laugh. I get infuriated (see previous rant about Michael Savage) because there are actually a lot of people who listen, and believe everything these guys say. I laugh, because the thoughts they present are just so ludicrous at times, there is nothing that you can do but laugh. Or cry maybe?? Drive time radio in the morning is completely useless (once again, aside from NPR). The local radio shows concentrate essentially on what they watched on TV last night and how bad, or how good it allegedly was/is. This of course centers on reality TV. Or should I say, so-called reality TV. Let’s face it folks, reality TV is nothing of the sort. It’s just awful stuff. I think most networks are officially out of ideas when they start running reality TV shows. Either that or they’re cheap and don’t want to actually pay for a good TV show. The influx of reality TV, it kills me. I concentrate now on the following channels: Discovery, TLC, History, Military, and that’s about it. Sure, I check out Law and Order SVU re-runs on USA, but that’s a well written and produced show. Luckily, there is Netflix. Mounds and mounds of movies to watch, and for 18 bucks per month, how can you complain about that? So now movie watching has begun with a vengeance. Such a good surface. No late fees, at all, and they just deliver them to your house. Whoever came up with that business model was a freakin’ genius. One of those ideas that I wish that I had come up with, but alas, I’m just not that smart.

My most recent sphere of influence has come from watching Japanese anime. I’ve been watching a lot of anime lately, it’s been some good stuff. Check out the following link for one of the latest movies that I’ve watched:

http://www.appleseedthemovie.com/

I would highly recommend this movie. Good plot line, good action, and well, it’s just a good movie, for a cartoon. I think this whole anime thing goes way back to when I was in kindergarten when I first saw the cartoon called G-Force:

http://www.akdreamer.com/botp/
http://www.absoluteanime.com/g-force/

That was some cool stuff, even then back in the day. Even though that was a long time ago, I do remember some of the episodes, but what I remember the most was actually “playing” G-Force out on the playground for recess. Yes, we’d pick our favorite characters and pretend we were them. Hey, we were 5 years old for crying out loud. It’s OK. Later on though, there was Voltron. Man, that was the kick ass stuff as far as anime went. A big ass robot kicking asses all over the universe. It had all of the elements you like to see as a kid. Robots, destruction, and of course swords. Big swords. Check out: http://www.voltronforce.com/ There were 2 versions, 1 of them was with about 30 vehicles that formed Voltron, but the other one, which I thought was better, was the version with the 5 lions that all formed together to make Voltron. Yes, lions I said. Then of course there were the Thundercats. Another cool ass cartoon. http://thundercats.vpga.com/ I have friends who to this day (Jason Darden you know who you are) will still come out with, “Snarf, Snarf… Oh, Lion-O.” If you’ve ever seen the cartoon, you know what I’m talking about over here. So yeah, anime, been a fan for a long time, and it continues now with my most recent movie additions and viewings. Quentin Tarantino had a bunch of it in Kill Bill Volume #1 as well. There were some gruesome scenes in that movie that were animated. Another movie that I have on my Netflix list that looks promising is Samurai Champloo (http://www.samuraichamploo.com/) which appears to be something that is going to be very good. A Japanese TV show, they’ve released it here in the US on DVD. That’s on the list, and I bumped that one up to the top of things. It looks really good. Samurais, noble missions, and hip-hop. Seems like the perfect set-up to me. There is a lot of good stuff coming out of Asia as far as entertainment I think lately. They seem to have some really original ideas, good story lines, good movie making, and everything else in the US is getting stale and boring. It seems like now they’re remaking every single movie out there. They’re even remaking movies that don’t need to be remade. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for instance. Was there any need?? I don’t think so. The original was so trippy and out there; how can you improve on such things? I say good day sir to that.

Seeing that it is almost 11 in the morning, and I’ve been writing this entry for awhile now, I might want to get back to work, and do something for this fine fine Monday morning. I mean, it is work after all. Mondays are horrible, especially when the weather is as spectacular as it is this morning. Mid 70’s, slight breeze from left to right, and projected to not get hotter than that today. For June in NC, that’s like a little slice of Heaven.