Taste the honey

My place in winter. I prefer autumn and winter over spring and summer. I'm a January
baby, that's just the way. But I do dig a nice tan and wearing just a pair of shorts. Bottom line I'm waiting for the heat to go away. But I took advantage of the weather today. Wednesday 070725 1030 hours: Dragged the top half of the platform onto more level ground in the driveway. Threw on a crazy dope playlist of metal and punk. racked up 70kilos.

Clean and Jerk x 1 rep rest 1:30
x 5 reps rest 2:00
1 rep every minute for 20 minutes with 70kg for 15 sets and 90kg for the final 5 sets.
A solid, solid wokout. My upper back is hella tight right now but a foam roller and some stretching will open me up. Post workout Shake: EAS 100% whey protien, blueberries, fat free milk, 5 ice cubes, blender.
530 calories, 6.5 g fat, 40g carbohydrates, 78g protein. Yummy.

Echo 4 Whiskey OUT.

All I want

Friday's workout: In the driveway, barbell loaded up with 90kg, more than I'd used before. Took awhile, but it came to me.
90kg Clean x 1 rep Clean and jerk x 1 rep Clean & Jerk = Jerk x 2 sets of 1 rep
Clean x 2 reps Clean, Clean Jerk x 2 sets of 1 rep C&J x 1 C&J x 3
Backed off to 70kg C&J x 1 C&J x 1 Hang Clean and Jerk x 2 C&J x 1 hard set of 4.

Took long rest periods between these sets. I was baking in the sun and my dog was acting funny, eating grass and not returning the punts I was delivering to him (he has a football made out of tennis ball material that I punt to him).

And that was it. Check out the official blog for more on what went down this weekend. And remember, the new site is LIVE! www.mainlinekettlebells.com

The devil and his had me down, in love with the dark side I'd found. . .

This picture taken with my camera phone during the song "10,000 Days". The lasers were, I mean, I can't even describe it. This is a debrief for the TOOL show. Sovereign Center Arena, Reading, PA. Show began at exactly 2110 hours on Monday 16 July 2007. Loe Jyons and I ditched Chesco at 1952 hours. We got out PA TPK ticket and rolled. Hit a stretch of TPK backed up but not catastrophically so. I was impressed at how nearly 98% of drivers maintained the English way, and got in one neat, orderly line and made it possible for Loe and I to be only 140 seconds late.

We rolled into the industrial sized ghost of Reading, PA at 2100 hours. Parked two blocks north of the arena and were within 50 yds. of the building when Tool rumbled into the building with the tsunami sized riff of "Jambi". Lots of folks weren't seated yet, and the security guy (long hair pulled back into a ponytail, black Ministry t-shirt and jeans) gave us a quick pat and let us in. He appeared more of a Tool fan than a ball buster. Ma Kettle scanned our Ticketmaster issued fun pass and we walked 20 feet, I shit you not, to our section. Tool had just treaded into the first stanza of that swirling, arousing bass line that hits about 2 minutes into the song. We grabbed our seats and got lost. Here is the complete set list. Minus feedback and a short break:
Jambi
Stinkfist (extended version)
Forty Six and Two
Schism
Lost Keys (intro to. . .)
Rosetta Stoned
Flood
Wings for Marie (Part 1)
10,000 Days (Wings part 2)
Lateralus (extended)
Vicarious
Show ended at 2223. They played for about 2 hours and ten minutes. I'm going to back it up a year and explain to you why this show was so important to me. Let me say this: I was not a fan of Tool's most recent album until about 48 hours ago.
When Ryan, a fellow Jarhead and full time Vanguardian who worked the 0500-0700 shift at the Malvern World Gym while I was there, passed me a burned copy of Tool's 2006 release "10,000 Days", I was way grateful. It was, of course, a full WEEK before the disc was released to the public. Naturally I pumped it right away. And as some of you may have guessed, I was not happy. That is the entire moral of this story. I learned from my own harsh judgement and impatience. This is the way Wee Willy works.

In 1993 a young lady named Cate played a song for me over the phone. It was a school night and I had no chance of getting to her house for some more make-out "lessons" (yes, I had a girl offer to teach me how to kiss, and I accepted). Wait a second, does that mean I was such a bad kisser that I rated lessons? Ouch. So Cate plays for me the end of Tool's "Sober" their March 1993 single from the "Undertow" record. And I tell her I don't like the guy's voice. It's not "metal" enough. She said it was smart kids' metal, and I'd never understand. I'm kidding, she told me to buy their first CD and then reevaluate. So I did. I rode my bike from Havertown north on Eagle Rd., banged a hard left
(west x northwest) onto the bus route, and flew to Sam Goody that Saturday night. Picked up "Opiate" and was caught way off guard by the menacing figure on the cover (I was 14 shut up!). When Opiate found it's way into my CD player at home, I was flown the buck away. It was the most unique sound I had ever heard. I was a Tool right away. And on it went. Undertow, they're first full-length record was released, and then right after I graduated high school AEnima was released, to the tune of "Stinkfist", titled "Track One" by the censors at MTV. Because, honestly, a song about fisting could be hidden easily by Tool, but they named it something creepy and uncharacteristically obvious anyway. So with that CD they cement themselves as the standard of alternative metal. And from their popularity bands like Deftones and Mudvayne have gotten attention. Well, in late 200 they release Salival, a live CD/DVD package that tripped me out when I heard it. And the website became a haven for weird art and intellectual stuff and they got huge and awesome. "Lateralus" was released that spring. It was full of good songs but also full of more weird interludes and space eating feedback tracks that I never cared for. Now, having seen the show, I know what the band has been doing. They have treated the last three albums, AEnima, Lateralus, and 10,000 Days as straight up journeys. Each CD represents the travels of the band, and it's members, and can even be taken as mimicry of one of their concerts. Just as the show took me from Alpha to Omega and beyond, the Cd's they have released, that I chalked up beneath Undertow in quality, were simply beyond my comprehension. I, a self professed True Tool Fan, just didn't get it. Now I do.

I always knew that this band was special. Beyond Maynard's voice and the cohesion between the musicians, it was obvious that something was at work here. Until the World Wide Web was in nearly every house, it was very, very hard to learn much about the band. Pictures of the the members were terribly hard to find. Interviews almost nonexistent. Lyrics and photos not printed on the inside of CD jackets. Who were these guys? I would ask myself. Hardly any videos have been released (I abhor the music video channels anyway), minimal airplay, and no movie-soundtrack releases led me to believe that these guys worked just as hard to maintain an unparalleled degree of privacy as they did to create the absolute TOPS in heavy music. So I said "well, let them be snobs and fill their records with interlude tracks that sound like crying babies and feedback and other shit that does not lend to the record". I could not have been more wrong. TOOL is the thinking man's metal. The "fuck you" of punk music delivered with the sonic ferocity of ever progressing musicianship that leans very much towards the "metal" side of things and wrapped in the sly grin only someone who is much, much smarter than you can maintain while holding back the biggest secret of the day. TOOL defies anything and everything, save for themselves and their fans. TOOL relies very heavily upon the loyalty of their listeners in order to continue the journey both as individual human animals and as the complimentary foursome they become when they plug in and pierce our ears. I could sit here and tell you how I felt during every song and what the lasers looked like and what the big screen showed during my favorite song of the night (Forty Six and Two) but that would do you no good, and it would likely appear as though I was masturbating with every keystroke. Instead, I will tell you this: I will try very hard to be patient with musicians as they take new directions and alter the sounds they work very hard to create, and I will never, EVER miss a TOOL show again.

Check out my OFFICIAL BLOG for some info relative to strength and growth.

You give me a name at the bottom!

This is Maynard James Keenan. This photo was taken somewhere between 1992 and 1994 I would guess.



Today is Monday, which is MY Sunday. And i got up early, had a wonderful morning with my lady, and had a very small breakfast. As she's going out the door, Snar says "Hey you're going to see TOOL tonight, right?" I had completely forgotten. How could I forget! I just spoke about it last night at around 2200 hours. I was anticipating waking up and that subject being the first thing on my mind. Instead all I could think about was what to mix with my protein powder. Water or fat free moo? Blueberries or strawberries? And then within 20 minutes, my attention shifted to a more important matter: What TOOL songs would I put on the playlist that was going to accommodate/fuel my AM weightlifting session. Here is how it went down. I put these songs on a playlist, and then burned it to CD. Sweat, Jambi, Jimmy, Hooker With A Penis (actual title of song), Vicarious, The Grudge, Right In Two, Bottom, Ticks & Leeches, Pushit (live).

I loaded up the little rascal in Mobile One and headed out for a quick round of errands. Vet's office for records transfer-complete. Post office to mail MLK T-Shirt to friend in Indiana-complete, drop off newly burned TOOL CD at my boy'
s living quarters to get him fired up for the show-complete. And here is fun nugget for you: He and I have only been to one concert together, and that was NIN last summer. And what did we listen to on the way down there? TOOL's "10,000 Days" (the title of my first ever blog post here in the 'sphere). Ahhh, the circle of life. It goes round and round.

So I just hammered out a good lift, and I will post it over on the MLK Official Blog.
I will return tomorrow with tales of TOOL, and what emotional impact the show had on me.

When I sin I sin for sure. . .

Come alive in the house that screams. I took a spell yesterday afternoon to get at least a thumbnail deep into "Black House" by Stephen King and Peter Straub. I read "The Talisman" about 6-8 years previous, and have wanted to shred "House" story for about the same length of time. So I get 10 pages in and pass out, cold, with the fan on high. It was a scorcher yesterday. I left sweat stains in the air, for the love of Pete. So enter this freaky little dream I had between 1345 and 1525 hours yesterday, 070710.

I'm totally third party watching a family grieve over what seems to be the discovery of a loved one's grave, conspicuously placed in the end zone of a high school football field. "?" I say to myself now, but in the dream 'twas real. Visceral. I felt that family twist and churn as they realized it was their son, who'd been missing for some time.

In what the family would almost certainly describe as a miracle, there emerged a transformation from inanimate corpse to winged, and brilliant body. The body arose from the ground as flesh and breath, and flew to the top of the field house I shit you not. The family was awash with a voracious gratitude, and casting their eyes skyward they followed their son's flight out of this plane in silence. I have no idea what all this means, but you have not heard shit yet.

Cut immediately to a small US/Mexico border town. In a nondescript state, or time, I am one to run across the border to get contraband and bring it to my fellow vagrants. Clad in filth ridden rags I called clothes and literally skulking around the hills of this pre-dawn Mexican village, I plan on exchanging something for something and getting back stateside unscathed. And it gets fuzzy. There was a kid involved and I was caught unaware that the law was within a breath and I had to move. So the kid, I think, helps me out and I happen to in turn escort him on my back away from, what I believe, was a duo of policemen looking for the head of one's wife. Yeah, for real.
I think that was unknown to me until the END of the dream. So the dream becomes a time and place where the police from the US side were pulling all sorts of sneaky moves to off the criminals and kill the kids from Mexico, all because this cop's wife was abducted, beaten to death and then decapitated. The body, I deduce from all the solid detective work I did in this dream, was buried under a football field at a stateside high school. He has been looking for the head for about 6 weeks now. This poor bastard's life is a total wreck, his partner is doing the absolute best he can to keep this guy afloat, but eventually the cop snaps. We'll cut to the end of the dream. I have located the home of the kid who knows what group beheaded the American policeman's wife, and I am bout to extract the info from him when we hear someone else in the house. Mind you, we are on the second story of a shanty-like house in a little Hooverville somewhere over the border and into Mexico. This kid and myself creep down to a better vantage point and we see the partner of the unstable policeman deliberately placing 2 liter bottles filled with cloudy, colored liquids all over the house. AS he spots us and informs us both, he has done this to every house on this filthy little hill. And upon asking why, it's so his partner will have peace, he says. And in a flash, the kid with the intel on the murderers goes running out of the first floor below and down through the hills. This is about the time I realize that the other cop's wife had been killed and that was what the fued was over. Until this point the dream was unraveling like a good book or movie. We beg the officer not to detonate the homemade bombs, designed to incinerate everyone and everything on this hill to give his partner some peace. He is uncooperative, and the kid and I take off. And that was the end of my dream. Pardon my language but HOW FUCKING WEIRD was that? My laws, I cannot stop thinking about it. Anyway, I have a new blog, and I'm formally inviting you all to it. I have linked us up at the top left of our screens. The Main Line Kettlebells Official Training Blog has all the information that is important to our growth as humans and trainers. This blog will be reserved for my personal workouts and, obviously, psychoholic slag.

Come alive in the house that screams,
W2

Must've been out your head. . .

Too long have I neglected thee. What post through yonder monitor wanders? I'm an unfaithful prick. I went off and set up a stiff lipped blog to inform potential punters and here I am all forgetting the people who mean the most to me. You team!

I saw that my last post was two weeks ago, and I felt scummy. Stand by for debrief:

General Wayne Elementary School 1000 hours Sunday 8 July 2007. % bells, a TAPS unit, a Track, and some sweaty ball bag weather. I let 'er rip.

Busted out the Camera and got some good stock footy for Tactical Kettlebell Manual exercises. Swing Press Get Up 2 handed HP 1 leg dead lift dip/pull up and lunge. I roasted my guts in front of my design guy and client John, as he followedd me all over the field for the second 45 minutes of my AM reconstitution. I pledged to the camera that I would run a TKM circuit and try and run 5 reps to 1, in every drill, in less than 20 minutes. When 20 min came, and I was burning inside out, I flagged my soft self and became less of a man. So when you see my trailer in the future and it looks like a I went hard for 20 mics, I DID, but my intent was to go a little longer. So it's not total horsesh*t, but it still stinks. Tactical Kettlebell Drills/reps performed in a circuit.

Pull Up 5, Swing 5 each arm, Get Ups 3L 2R, Lunge 5 on each leg, Push Up (in place of Dip) 5, 2 handed Hot Potato x 30 reps, Double Press x 5, 1 leg dead lift x 5 each leg. Made it down to through 4 reps each drill and all the way to 3 for each one, modifying some numbers for time, and at +20.00 minutes I was not near done, but had cashed in the above chips. Felt good cause I baked my sh&t on display but crappy that I couldn't find enough sack for rounds of two and one rep. Saddening. Do not hire me, I suck.

Drank mad water, protein powder and OJ in a blender with ice. YUM. NO joke. Talked to my boy Matt yesterday, who led me to Vegas, the promised land, so many years ago. All is well in his pocket of fitness, as is in mine. Gonna roll myself out.

Feel.