Kind of a scattershot article this time around, so bear with me.

Things are overall pretty swell for me these days and I thought I’d take a couple days to sit back and talk about positivity. More specifically, as you can see in the big letters above, 31 things that make me happy. The kind of stuff that I can look at, think about or just plain talk about and I’ll turn my frown into a smile. This isn’t really a countdown, as there’s no actual order. In fact, it’s just a bunch of random crap meant to reach that number. The neat stuff I don’t talk about, I’ll save for next year when I discuss 32 things that make me happy.

Why 31? Because I’m becoming increasingly grizzled in the next couple days. I suggest other bloggers give this a try when their time comes. It’s fun.

1) That What If Story Where Galactus Turns into Elvis

I wrote about this last year, so you can read my lengthier review here. The short of it is that Galactus is magically transformed into Elvis Presley and shot to Earth, where he finds family and a new meaning to his life. More importantly, he redeems the names of Galactus and Elvis Presley by assuming the throne of King of Rock and Roll.

Yeah, comic books are sweet.

2) “Learn to Fly” by the Foo Fighters

I can’t say that I have a favorite song, but I’m sure “Learn to Fly” is in my top five. It’s a beautiful tune that gets me pepped up to do whatever it is I’m preparing myself to do. For me, this is one of those songs that you listen to a million times, only listen to half of the words and get this image in your mind of what the song is really about, which is completely off-base. I can’t be the only one who does that.

For me, I always imagined the song as being about a World War I pilot in a nasty dogfight whose side is getting cut down by the enemy. He’s trying to get out of there with a handful of enemy fighters on his tail. He prays that his luck and worth as a pilot will let him live one more day to the point that he even considers selling his soul to the Devil. In the end, he maneuvers his way to safety to the point that he thinks his survival was caused purely by divine intervention.

Apparently the real meaning of the song is that it’s Grohl explaining the mental desperation of trying to write a good song under pressure. That’s pretty cool too, I guess.

3) Whenever Somebody Awesome Beats Up Superman When They Really Shouldn’t

When you ask the average man on the street who the strongest superhero character is, they’ll say Superman. Sure, a comic geek could say that Superman is nothing compared to the might of the Spectre and you’re always going to have that one guy desperately jumping through hoops to come up with a scenario where Batman makes a fool out of the guy. At the end of the day, Superman is considered one of the most unbeatable dudes in comics.

So it’s always a blast when he loses a fight to someone who isn’t even in his weight class. Sure, there’s always an explanation, but it doesn’t change the fact that Superman got his ass kicked by someone like Evil Spider-Man.

Yep. Back in All-Access #1, Venom showed up in the DC Universe and was quick to getting in a couple fights with Superman. He absolutely thrashed him again and again. And this was written by Ron Marz, a DC guy! Even when Spider-Man showed up, Venom kicked both their asses until the lame-oid Access showed up with a giant sonic cannon to save the day.

Some fans will explain it away that this was after Final Night, meaning that Superman wasn’t fully cooked up by the sun’s rays and was at a disadvantage. Too bad. My guy beat up your guy, so ha!

There are other examples. In one of my all-time favorite comics, Superman boxes against Muhammad Ali on a planet with a red sun, so naturally, Ali beats him down. Even though Superman has no chance in his vulnerable form, he still proves himself a badass by taking a beating and not falling down until the bell rings.

There was a crossover from when DC had the rights to Masters of the Universe and Superman ends up in Eternia. Despite having been thwarted by He-Man at every turn for years, Skeletor is able to pretty easily take down Superman without breaking a sweat. He just slices him in the chest with his magic sword and then zaps him with it until he stops moving. The dude beat up Superman, saved Christmas one time AND has a skull for a head. He’s the best.

Slightly related, but that JLA/Avengers crossover had a scene where Superman and Captain America are at each other’s throats to the point that the other heroes are pulling them apart. I’ve always thought this scene was great in its own flawed way because, really, what is Captain America going to do? His powers are that he’s good at doing crunches and talking. Superman can turn a mountain into glass by looking at it. It’s one of those cool little moments where Captain America is so in over his head but doesn’t care because he’s so determined that you believe he has a chance.

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Sunday was my first time ever performing on stage as I ended my Improv 101 class at the Upright Citizens Brigade Training Center. Ultimately, I think I did decent for a first-timer in an entry class and luckily it was filmed. After hours upon hours of figuring out editing software and almost getting it right, I’ve uploaded the 45 minutes of show into four segments.

The class was of 16 students. One dropped out and one sadly had a family emergency, so we were split into two groups of seven. The plan is to get a suggestion from the audience, do a monologue, do a handful of skits based on the ideas of that monologue, do another monologue and so on. Of the nine skits my group did, I’m in five, plus I did a monologue at one point. I’ll do some commentary on my stuff after the fold.

Bit of a personal history lesson to start this off. Years back, I went to college at the Rochester Institute of Technology. By the end of it, I was in kind of a depressed rut. I lost interest in my degree a long time ago and the hardest classes I had to take part in had incredibly little to do with what I was working towards. This was right around the time when David asked me to start writing on this site and that helped me out mentally more than he’ll ever know, which is one of the many reasons why he’ll always have my friendship and loyalty.

Once I was done with RIT, I was in a bad spot where I had no prospects and no direction. A high school friend of mine, Roger, invited me and some others to check out ASSSSCAT in New York City at the UCB Theater. UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade) is an improv comedy organization that’s been in NYC for years with the main attraction being an improv show called ASSSSCAT, featuring the same people who spun UCB into its own Comedy Central skit show for three seasons. Otherwise known as “Amy Poehler and those other dudes” to your average Joe. I went to a couple of ASSSSCAT performances and even got to see Jack McBreyer there before he hit it big. It was a blast and it was brought to my attention that they had their own improv school. It was something I thought would be great for me, but in my current situation, it wasn’t viable by a long shot. I didn’t have a job and no way was I going to be able to take care of the cost of both the classes and the constant trips into the city (I live about an hour away).

Eventually, I got a job at Barnes and Noble. It was something I figured was going to be incredibly temporary, but I was surprised by how much I took to it. Something about the people and the atmosphere of the place washed away the funk from my latter days of RIT and I’ve stayed there ever since. It made me feel content for the first time in years and it’s always been good to me. Still, in the beginning, I didn’t feel financially comfortable enough to do the UCB thing. After a short while, the idea faded away, completely forgotten.

My brother Geremy never lost his faith in me and surprised me last Christmas by revealing that he had enrolled me in Improv 101 at the UCB Training Facility. I was overwhelmed that he never forgot and I agreed that it was definitely time to get my ass into gear. Every Tuesday, I’ve been hitting the city for eight sets of three-hour classes as taught by experienced improv comedian and eerily chill guy Tim Martin. Other than attending class, I’ve also been tasked with seeing at least two UCB improv shows, most of which are free for me, so that’s some homework I can get behind.

I’ve been having the absolute time of my life and I’ve enjoyed learning alongside my other classmates (plus there’s a 4:1 female-to-male ratio, so giggity and all that). I’m already set to sign up for 201 and go as far with this as I possibly can, hoping to be all that I can be on the comedy front. With my time with 101 winding down, we have a big graduation performance thing coming up. The way it’ll work is that the class will split into two groups. Each group performs for about 20-25 minutes. Someone in the crowd says a word and someone in the group steps forward to tell a monologue about that word. Then once that’s done, skits happen off the cuff loosely based on the ideas from that story.

The show is on Sunday, April 22 at noon at the UCBeast Theater. I have friends and family planning to check it out, but if there are any readers out there in the area who have nothing going on that time of the day, by all means check it out. It’s only $5, so that’s not bad. Just keep in mind that there are two different UCB Theaters in NYC and this one is at the East Village. 153 East 3rd Street, to be exact.

If not, that’s cool too. I’m trying to have the thing filmed and put on YouTube. Unless we suck completely, in which I’ll just have the camera burned and buried at sea.

It’s time to prove to your friends (and readers) that you’re worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying (on stage). Sometimes that means killing a whole lot of people (with laughter).

This is probably going to seem really namedroppy and braggy, but please believe me that I don’t intend it that way. I hope you see it for what it is–genuine gratitude and a sort of… stunned appreciation.

I walk around with a black cloud a lot of the time. I have for years, really. I forget if I ever went into detail about what went down during March, but it was a bad month. My knee, two different payday screw-ups (both out of my control), an absurd wisdom tooth situation, and a variety of other things, both big and small, made for a very, very cloudy month. When you add in my long-running breakup with the comics I grew up on… let’s just say I was Charlie Browned out, to understate the situation. I was having a hard time, despite the advice and efforts of friends.

My temper burns cold, too. Even when I’m really heated, it’s not really obvious to everyone else. It’s like… the cloud metaphor works, actually. It’s like a cloud swirling around in my head, building up a head of static, rather outward responses like screaming and yelling. But after nearly a month of letting this cloud run things, after some new trauma arriving with every new week, I decided that I could either let myself be crushed or just sort of roll with the punches and laugh about it. A hollow laugh, maybe, but better a fake-ish laugh than sitting in my room in the dark on the weekends like I’d been doing. (And if we’re being honest, my luck in March? It was at Charlie Brown levels, which is actually pretty funny.) I made a joke on Twitter that I’d need Emerald City Comicon to be transcendant. Turns out… it basically was.

I wasn’t going to go to ECCC originally. I’d been curious about it, but if you’ve been reading this blog at all over the past year, you know I’m pretty burnt out on the industry. But Brandon (King City) Graham and Adam (Empowered) Warren were tweeting about it one day, and I think Brandon suggested I should go. I pshawed. It’d be cool, but nah. I had the money, thanks to my first tax refund in several years (that evaporated in March thanks to my leg, ha ha), but comics? Comics, comics, comics. But then Dennis Culver, a local artist whose work you’ve definitely seen online, threw me a DM that basically called my bluff.

So I booked a hotel right then, booked a flight later, and then, on 03/29, I caught a flight to Seattle. Rooming with Dennis was a lot of fun. He’s a good dude, and he knows a lot of cool people.By Thursday evening, I’d been introduced to half of Portland’s comics scene and a wide variety of other people employed in and around comics.

That night basically set the tone for the weekend. I met a lot of new people and saw a handful of old friends, and all of them were extraordinarily kind. I described it as “unbearably kind” in an email to a friend, but that could be taken the wrong way. What I mean by that is that I was surprised and flattered to be where I was, in kind of a “What did I do to deserve this? Is this real life? Or is it just fantasy?” type of way.

Let’s be honest here: I’m nobody. I write well, and I’m thankful for every reader I have (even this guy), but as far as the bigger picture goes? I’m a customer, homey. But the kindness on display at ECCC, whether coming from a complete stranger or someone who knew my work, was stunning. No, stunning is the wrong word. Devastating? Imagine being given a gift and it’s so good that your first thought is “I don’t deserve this.” It’s that feeling. Whatever that’s called.

I met Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover. They’re outrageously funny people. I knew and enjoyed their comics work, but seriously: dang. Josh Williamson, Jason Ho, Dennis, Andy Khouri, Vinny Navarrete, Doc Shaner, and Mitch Gerads are great people to hang around with. I didn’t get a chance to get into a deep Spider-Man conversation with Josh, but we danced around it all weekend. My SF and former SF buds Chunk Kelly, Emily Stackhouse, Nick Shahan, Greg Hinkle, and Jason McNamara came through and we had a lot of fun catching up. Joe Keatinge was tabling with Emi Lenox and her awesome hair bow, and chewing the fat with those two was great, too. Jen van Meter and Greg Rucka were unbelievably gracious as we talked for an hour or so. Ravishing Ron Richards, iFanboy extraordinaire, was running the floor of the con when he wasn’t being stopped by his scads of fans. Euge Ahn, aka Adam Warrock, was kicking around. Steve Lieber is a funny guy. Jeff Parker is the best kind of rascal, and it was a pleasure to finally meet him. Zack Soto is another cool dude, even though I keep forgetting that I owe him emails (sorry! I am the worst at email). Adam Warren and Brandon Graham both let me chill behind their tables for a couple of hours and talk while they signed and chatted with fans. I met this guy Mike who sent me a really kind note when I talked about feeling down a long time ago, and he showed me his awesome looking comic. I ran into Nolan Jones, who is a cool dude, even if his beloved Kansas U beat my beloved Ohio State Buckeyes by two points in basketball on Saturday (booooo!). The always delightful Allison Baker & Chris Roberson were around. Rachel Edidin and I bonded over X-Men and Thor. I think I ran into Sam Humphries in two different elevators before we got a chance to stop and chat. I hung around with Ali Colluccio and Cheryl Lynn. I got breakfast with Tom Spurgeon, Graham, and Robin McConnell (there’s a pic or two here) I told dumb stories about breaking my finger while playing video games and played down my leg brace. I talked about shoes.

I basically got to hang out with a bunch of cool people and forget about everything (barring the knee, which was always present, but you’d be surprised what a bunch of alcohol will do for pain killing). At one point on Saturday, I was in a deep conversation with Cheryl Lynn and Ali (sitting on either side of me) and Graham and Warren (sitting on the wings). I took a quick moment to recognize that my life had officially passed the surreal barrier and shot on toward absurd.

A funny thing is that I realized once I got to the con that I’d read the brochure wrong and the panel I really wanted to see, a three-way conversation between Adam Warren, Brandon Graham, and Bryan Lee O’Malley, was happening when I’d need to travel to the airport to leave. I was pretty bummed about that. Then, on Sunday, I got a series of notices that my flight was delayed, but that I still had to show up on time just in case. Which is cool, whatever, I’d already resigned myself to not seeing the panel and just catching Robin’s MP3s at a later date.

And then I got an email that my flight was canceled and the soonest they could fly me out was Tuesday morning. Which is ridiculous, obviously. Suddenly I was homeless for the next two days and facing missing a couple more days of work than I’d planned for, which would basically tip the deadline dominoes much faster than I’d wanted. Cold temper, though, right? So I made a joke about it, decided to call the airline after the panel, and caught the panel of the convention. I had to rush out of the con a little after that, but it is what it is. (I later got a flight that next morning, after a whole lot of stress and a dead phone battery.)

I know I’m forgetting some people. I got sick after the con, sick enough to work from home today, and I’m buried under cold/flu meds, among other things. I apologize for that, but if we met and talked, I almost definitely liked you. (Everyone except that Ron Richards! :argh: ) I just wanted to thank as many people as I could, and by name and in public, because that’s how grateful I am. I can’t even tell you, man. My heart didn’t grow three sizes (it’s still blacker than midnight at Broadway and Myrtle), but like… I don’t know that I have the words to express the gratitude I feel. I was having a real hard time, and for a weekend, I got to come up for air and avoid that black cloud.

So, seriously, truly: thanks. I had a great time. Easily the best convention experience ever. Y’all are stunning, and I’m extremely, extremely grateful.

This Trayvon Martin thing has crawled all the way under my skin. In part because it’s an absolute travesty, which I feel like is obvious to anyone with two eyes and half a brain. But really, it’s because I’ve heard this song over and over again, ever since I was a kid. “Say sir when speaking to authority figures, keep your hands out of your pockets, look directly into their eyes, be respectful, do everything you can to make sure that my firstborn son doesn’t come home in a pine box because people can and will hurt you for no reason past your skin color.”

One of the biggest tragedies in the Trayvon Martin case isn’t that he was hunted and murdered and his killer will probably get away scot-free. It’s that a mother and father lost their son for a senseless reason, and now their son is an idea. He’s a cautionary tale. He’s a prop for someone else’s argument, and will be until the end of time. He’s not even a statistic. At least with a statistic, it’s anonymous and eventually fades into nothing. An idea is inescapable. People are already taking that boy’s name in vain, using his photo and name however they wish and to prop up whatever point they have to make. I’m probably guilty of it myself, just by writing this paragraph.

There’s a lot of Brothers boys. My little brother is 22. My littlest brother turns four this year. I’ve got close boy cousins that range from 10 to 18 or so. I’m slimmer than most of ’em, but we’re all pretty tall. Tall enough and black enough to be threatening by default, to know not to mouth off to the police, to know how many black people are in a room within seconds of walking in, to knowing exactly how angry we can get in public before we become a Problem. It is what it is.

None of us are innocent, despite what we might tell our parents. Stories like Trayvon Martin’s, or Sean Bell’s, or Kathryn Johnston’s, or Oscar Grant’s prove that the first thing people are going to do when I get shot is look at what I did to deserve it. Not even in a funny Richard Pryor, “It oughtta be against the law to make a motherfucker want to kill you,” sort of way, either. I mean people are going to go out and look for the things that I was involved in that make me less of an innocent, and therefore more worthy of being killed. He smokes weed? Probably a drug dealing thug. Oh dang, he has a tattoo in Swahili on his arm? Is that gang-related? Did he hate white people? Is he a radical black nationalist? Came from a single parent household, huh? Got up to hoodlum stuff while he was overseas? Let’s find some old girlfriends, what do they got to say? What’s with those scars up and down his arms? Have you seen his iTunes? Did he buy all this murder music? I made a joke the other day that my library is 1/4 drug dealing music, 1/4 drug using music, 1/4 murda muzik, and 1/4 love songs. Pick your proof. Build your picture of me.

Right now, Reuters (and the New York Times, and other outlets) is reporting that Martin was suspended from school for ten days because they found a baggie that might have at one point contained marijuana in his backpack. It didn’t have weed in it, mind. It might have. It’s irrelevant to the case, but there’s an intimation there, a hint that Martin wasn’t just black, he was black. Aggressive. Angry. Whatever stereotype you choose to fill-in to his blank so that you can make an informed decision on how to feel about him getting shot after buying candy and tea during the All-Star game. Since he had maybe smoked weed at seventeen years old, several weeks before he was tracked and murdered by a guy with a gun and an inflated sense of his own authority, he had maybe had it coming. After all, drugs, right? Something something gang banger something. Rap music.

This happens every time. It happened to Oscar Grant, it happened to Sean Bell, it happened to Kathryn Johnston (who was 92 years old when she was shot and killed and had officers plant drugs in her home), and it happened to Shem Walker. Remember that guy? He came home to his family’s house to find a suspicious stranger sitting on his stoop. Knowing good and well that nothing good will ever come of that, he told the stranger to move on. The stranger had earphones on and didn’t hear him somehow. Walker went to remove the man physically, for obvious reasons, they got into a fight, and then the stranger pulled a gun and shot him in the chest. The stranger, of course, was an undercover cop, waiting out a drug bust down the road. In the days and weeks after the shooting, we found out that Walker used to be a convict. Why? Because… because, man, just because. Because that somehow has something to do with him not wanting some suspicious dude on his mother’s porch. Son was 49 years old, I don’t know how old his mother was, and he was killed for doing exactly what he should have done in that situation. He was killed for being a good son. But he went to jail once you know? Never mind whether or not he was reformed. He was a convict.

Martin’s story — all of these stories — is a reminder. It’s a reminder that you have so little control over your life that who you are doesn’t actually matter. All that matters is what other people can make you into. You’re not a person, not in the end. You’re just a thing to be used and discarded, no matter how good of a guy you were, no matter how cute your daughter is, they’re going to find something on you and that’s going to be that. Sorry, but Mister Charlie needs grist for the mill.

It’s depressing. I’m depressed. I’ve had a hard March. I’ve been pretty much checked out, if we’re being totally honest with each other. It took me several days to realize that I almost actually died when I had my bicycle accident on 02/29. If the lady behind me hadn’t hit her brakes coming down that hill after I wiped out and savaged my knee, I’d be done. Zipped up in plastic, when it happens, that’s it. The month that followed has been positively absurd with the number of things going wrong, breaking, and whatever else. (The month isn’t over yet and there’s good odds I’m due one more poor turn, ha ha!) I’ve been bummed for weeks, running as fast as I can to stay ahead of the devil, and this Martin thing is like… it’s cold water to the face. It’s a “Welcome back!” from reality, where America chews up and spits out the ones who need it most, where life isn’t fair and you were stupid for thinking it was fair in the first place, where being black makes you a target to the people sworn to swerve and protect and a threat to everyone else. Reminds me of something Sarah Jones once said. “It is the thickest blood on this planet/ The blood that, sprays and spills in buckets/ soaks and stains the nightly news, but fuck it/ A colored life still ain’t worth but a few ducats.”

And it’s racism. All of it. It is unquestionably, objectively racism. It’s not some guy going out to lynch nigras for looking at white women, but that’s not the entirety of what racism is. Racism is a system. Racism is a way of thinking. Racism is subconscious. Racism is an entire country being trained to suspect an entire race of being shifty, lazy, or suspicious by default. I have to prove that I’m not a threat? How about I make America prove it doesn’t want to murder me, since there’s way more precedent for that than some skinny kid being a savage. If I have my hood up and I’m not smiling because I’m having a bad day, I’m a threat, someone to make you clutch your purse or hug your girl closer. I’m a thug? C’mon son. I’m just having a bad day in the big city. Get real. You’ve been trained to see brown skin and go to “Threat!” first instead of “Person!” You’ve been brainwashed.

The craziest part of this brainwashing is how a very basic situation has been twisted into something incredibly ugly. An unarmed child is shot and killed for doing nothing but walking home by a man with no authority who had been told to stand down by the police. This is cut and dry. You can look at this and go, “Oh, that’s a tragedy.” But because the kid was black, because everything is ultra-politicized, because racism is so ingrained in the DNA of the United States of America, this is somehow a controversy. I repeat: an unarmed child was shot dead by a grown man. This is one situation that everyone should be able to understand. It’s a nightmare scenario for every family ever. And yet… the news is telling us that the child may have possibly been a thug, a drug dealer, a hoodlum, a monster, as if any of that has anything to do with why he got shot. There are people out there actively digging up (incorrect) dirt on Trayvon Martin as if that matters at all. He’s a… I don’t even know, a point in a long-running argument, an abstraction about the evils of black youth.

The flip side of that coin is that “Black people are cool now.” Saving them, at least.

The past few weeks have been pretty bad for trend hopping. There was the Kony 2012 crew getting up on their white horse and riding into Uganda by way of Youtube so they could… make Joseph Kony famous? That guy is personally responsible for the dislocation of millions, the murder and rape of thousands of children, and worse. Guess what: he’s plenty famous already, and your idiotic, soundbite-ready youtubes aren’t a help except to people whose idea of activism is turning their location on Twitter to “Iran.” Trayvon Martin has given plenty of people a chance to beat their chest, including a bunch of Occupy Wall Streets advocating violence at a peaceful march. Geraldo is off somewhere telling black people how to live their lives. Everyone is all choked up at black men and women sharing their stories of racism and appalled at the world we live in. Everybody’s got a cause, everybody feels bad… I’m not without sin myself, this essay is proof positive, but I can’t tell you how depressing it is to see my white friends suddenly discover police brutality (hey there, occupy wall street), or racism, or realize that every single one of their black friends has a bunch of stories about times that their race negatively affected their lives. It’s so obvious to me, and it sucks and is unfair that even support sometimes feels like an attack. Where have you been that you didn’t notice this until now?

The experience of being black in America is one of being constantly reminded that you are black in America, with all the drama that comes from it. The preferred term online amongst… whoever for black people is People of Color, or POC. I hate it, because yo, first, everyone has color, and second, how about you don’t define me in opposition to somebody else? I feel like that should be a basic human right. The right to not be not-White. It’s basic things like that that are what I mean. I can’t escape the fact that I’m black and have built-in baggage, even if I wanted to.

A post-racial society is a myth, and everyone who claims to be color-blind is an idiot. Race is inextricable from our daily life, for better or for worse. That’s part of why so much of my comics-related writing has revolved around the intersection between black people and comics. It matters to me, on a deeply personal level, and I’m trying to figure out how to make that come across, from my first stumbling and clumsy steps to the targeted icepicks to the neck in blog form that I wish I was better at using today. I can’t not think about it, because almost every time I read a comic, I’m reminded of it.

I’m constantly being reminded of the fact that I’m black and how terrible being black can be almost every time I take in something. Music, movies, real life, love, friendship, whatever. It affects everything. You can’t be race-blind. Not when every movie with a black star is the tipping point for black cinema, or when the cool new way to say a woman has a nice butt online (“DAT ASS!”) is explicitly satirizing somebody’s fake idea of a black rapper (specifically Rich Boy), or when a discussion on white British soul singers somehow turns into a referendum on who “owns” a certain type of music. Not when, in America, white is always going to be treated as the default. There’s gonna be that twinge, that feeling of “Oh, this is talking about me or people like me,” and it’s stupid. It’s absolutely stupid.

And black is beautiful, man. I wouldn’t trade being black, being who I am, for the world. But, boy would I love to jettison some of the baggage associated with it. I don’t like looking at Trayvon Martin and seeing me and my brothers and my cousins. I don’t like talking to the homey Cheryl Lynn and having her point out that at a certain point, the light goes out in the eyes of little black boys, and then realizing that there’s a reason I stopped smiling in every picture I have of myself past a certain age. I don’t like realizing that every connection I made to a popular character comes via metaphor or inference, rather than actual fact. Real life is hard enough without that baggage.

With it… well, life goes on regardless. Trayvon Martin has graduated to being a symbol, rather than a person. He’s a chess piece to be used to show that black people are horrible, that police brutality exists, that kids these days are a problem, that the news media is broken and corrupt, that America eats its young. In death, as in life, he’s treated as something less than human. It’s incredibly unfair, and there’s no solution on the horizon.

I started working out earlier this year. I’m not particularly out of shape or anything. I’ve been skinny to slim all my life, but a youth spent slaving for my grandfather, cutting down trees, knocking down walls, mowing the lawn, and working on interminable home improvement projects means that I’m fairly fit. I get by. I bike a few miles each day, with a stiff hill between my crib and job. I wouldn’t make the cover of Men’s Health, not topless at least, but my calves are so toned from a couple years of biking around San Francisco that women fall into hysterics, the old-fashioned kind, when I reveal them. It’s pretty awkward, actually. I feel pretty guilty. Anyway.

I know how to exercise, anyone who’s had phys ed knows how to exercise, but I was smart enough to know that I did not know what I needed to do. “I should exercise!” was the beginning and end of my thoughts on the matter. I asked a friend of mine, Larry Leong, for advice. I’ve known Larry for probably ten years now? Maybe a little less, I don’t know. Here’s a video I found of him by googling his name:

Larry’s in shape. He does stuntwork, he shot and produced his own (very funny) martial arts flick, he mastered a one-arm pull-up, and he deadlifts some absurd amount like 2.5 times his weight or something. I hate him. He’s the kind of fit that makes people who are in okay shape but don’t exercise feel guilty. But all that aside, he’s got focus. He sets a reachable goal and he knocks it down before moving onto the next goal. I know this because I’ve talked to this guy on a regular basis for years, so I’ve seen him do exactly that while I sit on my couch and seethe while shoving cinnamon rolls down my gullet. That focus is valuable. It’s a problem-solving tool.

I went to Larry when I decided I wanted to start working out on a regular basis because of that focus, and also because he was around and I knew I could scam free advice off him. I told him what I was thinking about doing (“I dunno, lift weights I guess?”), what I was capable of, and what I owned (“A floor I can do pushups on.”). He gave me a five-day regimen that was composed of around 30-45 minutes of lifting, cardio, and other things. Every day worked a different part of the body, and it was the sort of stuff I could do in my tiny San Francisco apartment with no trouble (barring the jump rope). His combination of educating and guilt tripping me worked, and I picked it up pretty well.

I’ve kept up with it, for the most part. I always cheated on the abs, though. Lunges were incredibly tough, but abs were the one thing where I was like “Ehhhh… I’ll do double next week to make up for it.” I recently asked Larry for some abs-specific stuff to help rectify my abs situation. He told me to do Ab Ripper X, which is part of the P90X series, twice in a row. Now, our friendship is going to end in a murder/suicide.

Larry’s started up this new online effort called Move Damn You!. Instead of showing you how to work out, it’s teaching you why and how you should work out. You always hear that you should “get in shape” or someone’s “gotta get to the gym,” but no one really talks about the benefits or how to do it. Not the step-by-step how to do it–I mean how you should approach it, what mind state you should be in, what you should expect to get out of it, and all of that. “Lose weight!” or “Get muscles!” is… it’s small, yeah? It’s vague. It’s easy to fail with goals like that. Specificity counts for a lot, especially when you’re doing something like working out. You have to have a goal in mind or else you’ll just get tired and quit.

Here’s episode 18, featuring my friend Ching Chow:

Larry’s show approaches working out as a holistic exercise. It’s not just curl twenty times, break, curl eighteen times, break, curl sixteen times, break, curl til failure. You have to work toward a goal and you have to commit yourself. Why are you curling? Why are you doing one hundred push-ups? How is your form? Is it worthwhile? Are you seeing results or do you just use your one hundred push-ups story to impress girls at bars?

I like that he talks to people about how they approach exercise. I especially liked episode 3, featuring Karuna Tanahashi. She spins poi and fire dances, which isn’t something I would normally think about as being exercise, but totally counts. It takes focus, concentration, and physical control. If she wasn’t comfortable with herself and her body, she couldn’t do it. Exercise, being fit, whatever, is about moving and the good feelings that come from moving, directly or indirectly. You might feel better because your beer belly turns into a six pack, or because suddenly your thighs look amazing in that pencil skirt. Or maybe it’s because you work out hard enough that you get that really nice burst of endorphins and feel good for a couple hours. (It’s magical before biking to work, let me tell you that for real. Someone cuts you off in their Benz and you just smile and say “thank you.” You don’t even hope they rear-end a bus or anything.)

The thread that runs through the videos is how important and life-affirming it is to use your body. You’re pretty much stuck with the body you have, so why not really explore and test your limits? Why not push past those limits and risk heinous bodily harm? Being really comfortable in and familiar with your body is a really, really good feeling. It feels like the root of confidence sometimes. If all you have is your body, and you’re proud of it, then you’re gonna be fine, yeah? I dunno, maybe that’s just me.

Here’s a paraphrase/edit of what Larry told me when I asked him what the point of MDY! was:

Well, the purpose of it is to promote exercise, that everyone can/should find a joy in using their bodies, that prolonged inactivity is a waste of your life/a thoroughly irresponsible way of living, and that there’s always something out there for you to excel at, as long as you take the time to look and put the time in. The biggest obstacle anybody has is just getting started in the first place, which is not that hard.

I guess that point about “always something out there” has a lot to do with the interviews because basically everyone I’ve talked to has had some problem they needed to work with or push through, even if it is just getting older, but that persistence is what counts. Strength of character. Moving forward. Fear of failure is bullshit. Failure is a speed bump, not a roadblock.

Actually, I guess the main point is that anybody can improve the quality of their life as long as they’re willing to start. There’s always options, there’s always something you can find that works with your body. You just need to persist and be intelligent enough to question what you learn and understand it. People are too quick to buy into products or routines without putting in the effort to understand WHY things work.

The variety of stuff that he goes over in his videos and that his interviewees discuss was/is really helpful to me. Everybody’s good at something. You just have to find it. I’m going to be taking a dance class at the top of the year. I rarely dance, rarely meaning “hardly ever in public” basically, but I decided that I want to learn how to salsa. I know that I don’t have the footwork to do it right now, but I would like to add that footwork to my repertoire. I think that’ll be a good feeling. So: I’m going to learn how to salsa. Pick a goal and knock it down. Exercise is bigger than bench pressing and sit-ups. (I hate sit-ups.)

Also, I mean, Larry’s got jokes and viking hats along with all of that advice. So there’s that, too. Move Damn You! is great motivation for getting off your butt and into motion. It’s not about turning into a steroid nut or whatever so much as it is all about just being understanding why you should move your body.

Check out his Youtube page here or visit Move Damn You!. These are good videos, maybe five minutes max, and really solid motivation. Well worth watching and considering.