Well, I was gonna max you next week, but now your low back will be so fried that that plan is out the window. Its okay, though. You wanna be the surgeon? Here is the scalpel. They learn though. Or they quit. Most quit.
Oh! That brings me to one of my favorite expressions of all time, coined by one of my one time good friends. He is now a college head coach and he would get all upset if I credited him with it, because now he wears a pinkie ring and won't return my phone calls. I am sure he is busy. Anyway, at one time , he was one of the guys, and whenever a player or other coach would whine or complain, he would simply say, "Don't Bitch, Quit."
He meant do it or don't do it, but if you are gonna complain about it, just walk the hell on, nobody wants to hear it. That's a good one.
I have a low tolerance for complaining of any sort, and I have a tendency to complain about complainers, so that makes me one also? Sort of, I guess. But it's different.
When my wife was giving birth to my third son, she was moaning and groaning a whole bunch while she was in labor. I simply asked, "What good does all of that moaning and groaning do anyway?" She told me to "Shut the you-know-what up!" But I was serious. Why do that? Does it help? And then I found out that the epidural didn't take. I did feel like an ass. But damn, that was enough of the moaning and groaning.
I don't believe that I have heard my father ever complain about a thing. And especially about pain. And that is after a hip replacement, a knee replacement, all types of broken bones. Wait, I lied. When players celebrate on the football field, when they dance after making a tackle or a touchdown, he voices his displeasure. He grew up with Johnny U and Butkus, you see. Grown men dancing is a little foreign to him. Dancing. Grown men. Anything more than flipping the ball to the ref makes him nuts. Me too. But we are in the minority for sure. We have gone the way of wooden ships and washboards.
Heck, even strength coaches dance now. Good stuff.
What else is good? Music- wise, Unblackened by BLS is good, always been a Zakk fan. It's like an unplugged Zakk.
Also Phil Anselmo and the Illegals.
For those with more of an off- the- beaten -path taste, a cassette put out by my friend Phillip McSorely's new band Recluse is awesomely dirty and beyond evil.
Also been playing Archgoat, Bestial Mockery, Carcass, Dissection, Intoxicated, Necrophobic, Pat Travers, Rwake, and Abruptum. Check them out , but don't if you are sensitive about lyrics and the meaning of them and ooh it's so evil.
Book-wise? Started Pat Conroy's new one, didn't finish. Read League of Denial about head injuries and the NFL. If you want your kid to play football, don't read it. Read the Unknown Mongol, which was surprisingly good. Read Gilvert, freaking off the wall. OFF THE WALL. Reading Corrosion, by Jon Bassoff which is right up my alley. If my Valium doesn't get me first, I may finish it tonight. Read an interview with Donald Ray Pollock in Bull Magazine. He is a fascinating character, and I am anxiously awaiting his next book. His Knockemstiff is one of my all time favorites, sick and disturbing and so real. Read Louder than Hell, The Definitive Oral History of Heavy Metal. Also read The Man At The Bridge by Willeford. Reading Ernest Hemingway On Writing, very good. Started Fiend, not into zombies. Read, Happy, Happy, Happy by Phil Robertson. Awful. Muscle by Jon Hotten is actually good, I had never heard of it before. Undercover Cop by Mike Russel, pretty good.
Here is some good training music to leave you with from Phil-
