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My Experiment With A Performance Enhancing Drug

My iPod playlist on steroids.

I have been asked once in my life whether I was on performance enhancing substances.  It was when I put on 35 pounds  and added 45 lbs to my bench press in 3 1/2 months my junior year of college.  That was just the result of eating about 5,000 calories a day and lifting for about two hours a day with two friends who were offensive lineman on the football team.   But beyond that my life has resembled a macrocosm of a wrestler’s season.

  • September 1997 – 205 lbs
  • September 1998-March 2000 – 240 lbs
  • May 2000 – 270 lbs (mentioned above)
  • September 2000 – 248 lbs (a bench warming beast in college hoops)
  • September 2001 – 240 lbs (1st yr of law school)
  •  June 2002 – 260 lbs
  • September 2002  – 232 lbs (body fat resembled law school, both too low)
  • September 2004 (start DA’s office) – 245 lbs
  • March 2006 – 284 lbs (career high – lesson: donuts are bad for you)
  • July 2007 – 233 lbs (proof that stress/increase in being mindfuc-ed + exercise = loss of appetite and good abs)
  • January 2008 – 265 lbs and dropping (Dominos + cupcakes + lifting + no cardio)

I am laying out this time line so that I do not have to make any A-Rod excuses for any increase in jacked-ness that occurs over the next fewmonths (even though I still will claim to be immature and amateur and stupid well into my forties).  But as I close in on the age of 30 (thank God I’m not a woman or that would be scary!) I am realizing that my ability to shed weight like a leper or a diabetic will become tougher and tougher so I think this has to be the last time I pull this sh*t.  So now what do I do to get back down with keeping in my all natural approach?  The iPod playlist has become my performance enhancer and I am going to share it with all of you now so that you can take your workouts to the next level.  And people keep telling me about The Secret (envision your future success and you will have it – a/k/a horsesh*t).  Here is what I listened to in the weight room today and my corresponding visions:

  1. 8 Mile – Eminem (perfect montage for an aspiring comedian – I will go for comedy no matter what – hooray!)
  2. American Idiot – Green Day (me in a lawyer suit)
  3. Flashing Lights – Kanye West (“she don’t believe in shooting stars, but she believes in shoes and cars” – no, only positive thoughts, remember!)
  4. Live Your Life – T.I. (yeah, you are going to make it – Jesus, I am getting Fu-king corny)
  5. Don’t Stop Believin’ – Journey (I have reached my destination – fully immersed in the cornfield)
  6. The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning – Smashing Pumpkins (this is a cool song from the Watchmen preview – I wonder if I’ll ever be in a movie – this song sounds like the apocalypse – why did that old bit*h just steal my spot on the bench?)
  7. Forever – Chris Brown (poor Rihanna, well maybe she’s a bit*h, dark place – yikes – next song)
  8. Invisible – Clay Aiken (what the fu-k? how did that get in there – did that chick see Clay Aiken’s picture on my iPod?)
  9. Light On – David Cook (finally an American Idol I can be proud to have in my iPod. I think.  song about leaving loved ones for life on the road.  life on the road will be lonely, but at least I will be working.  does an open mic in the west village tonight count as life on the road?)
  10. Proud Mary – Tina and Ike Turner (“Left a good job in the city”  Yes I did!  Well, technically I was going to leave a good job in the city, but a few months earlier the good job in the city said, “why don’t you stop workin’ for the man every nigh and day.  we insist.”)
  11. Hurt – Johnny Cash (imagining a painful second divorce later in life when my successful comedy is winding down)
  12. The Wrestler – Bruce Springsteen (not going to give up the ending of the movie, but let’s just say I am seeing the end of my comedy career)

With this playlist I am pretty sure I will get back into shape and have a wonderful comedy career that eventually ends in loneliness and despair with Marisa Tomei ditching me at New York Comedy Club.  Let’s hope The Secret is as bullsh*t as I think it is.

Blog

Why I Feel Bad For A-Rod

The fact that he had sex with the senior citizen yoga champ is only one reason.

For years Alex Rodriguez has been the target of Haters.  There is no other word for them.

When he came into the league he was insanely talented.  From the age of 20 he was putting up big numbers and he just kept getting better.  He was more talented, better looking and when he signed his 10 year, $250 million contract, richer than anyone else in the game.  But he never had the cool guy appeal of Derek Jeter that would get him undying loyalty of fans, or the bad guy demeanor of Barry Bonds that would get fans because of an almost anti-hero status.  Alex just went about his business and treated the game just like that.  He was a self-conscious business man playing a sport for a living.    He is a corporate sports figure and people resent him for it (at least America is finally hating the actually corporate d-bags as well).  He was too perfect, or worse, looked like he was trying to be perfect.  And it seems that nothing annoys people more nowadays, than the guy who is trying to be better than others.  It reminds others of their failings and builds resentment and a desire to uncover some hypocrisy or fault within that person.  America’s motto might as well be, “If you can’t beat them, beat them down.”

When the steroid and HGH scandal began breaking I kept saying A-Rod could not be guilty.  He had so much natural talent coming into the league: speed, power, skills that it did not seem impossible by any stretch that over the course of 8 years he could get gradually bigger and stronger.  From 18 to 23 I went from 205 to to 248.  And that was just subway sandwiches, protein shakes and hostility at being a hoops team bench warmer that went into that growth.  So why was it implausible that a professional athlete of A-Rod’s caliber could not put on 40 pounds of muscle in 5 or 6 years?

His transformation was not the transformation that Mark McGwire or Barry Bonds underwent, which resembled the origin stories of superheros (Bonds/McGwire was once a normal baseball player and then after the nuclear spill he grew to the size of a house and could hit a home run just by looking at the ball).  Not to mention that everyone involved with A-Rod in baseball genuinely seemed surprised when the news was revealed.

But there was a sign that something was not right with A-Rod.  It was not his stats, his build, his self-conscious behavior.  It was the fact that he was banging a former pop star who’s body now resembled a yoga infused Iggy Pop.  While Madonna seems committed to going from pop icon to Cher, A-Rod has fast forwarded right past cougar land into the era of the saber-toothed tigers.  Wasn’t this a cry for help? Injecting testicle shrinking substances in your body is no danger compared to sticking your dipstick inside that kabbalah cesspool.  Who knows, may A-Rod is gay and he is just banging Madonna because she is a step away from women and a step towards men.  If this is the case, might I suggest the transition team, so to speak, for A-Rod (in increasing order of masculinity):

  • Madonna
  • Jaime Lee Curtis
  • Ricky Martin
  • Lance Bass
  • Macy Gray
  • Hugh Jackman
  • Janet Reno

But it seems the safest way to be a sports fan is to be cynical.  For years fans (me included) bought that the ball was juiced.  Major League Baseball actually convinced fans that tight stitching was leading to home run records getting broken and then they make a show of outrage while they leave their Frankensteins out to dry.  I don’t know what A-Rod will say as his excuse, if he says anything at all, but if he says that he used them because he was tired of seeing his natural talent unfairly eclipsed by a game that was allowing rampant drug use then I could be ok with that.  He has enough years left in his career that I think he could rehabilitate himself, if the Haters let him.

And assuming there is an inquiry into steroids into comedy, it should be noted that my personal high in bench press was achieved prior to my comedy career and before Carrot Top showed up with Dwight Howard’s shoulders.