From Erotic, to Aerobic

At first, I think I'll let the picture speak for itself...

If you want to understand the picture, look below to read an excerpt from the New York Times article that accompanied this picture:

BEIJING — Clad in knee-high leather boots, spandex shorts and a sports bra, Xiao Yan struck a pose two feet off the ground, her head glistening with sweat and her arms straining as she suspended herself from a vertical pole.

“Keeping your grip is the hardest part,” she said. “It’s really easy to slide downward.”

Ms. Xiao, 26, who works as a supermarket manager, is one of a growing number of women experimenting with China’s newest, and most controversial, fitness activity: pole dancing.

“I used to take a normal aerobics class, but it was boring and monotonous,” Ms. Xiao said. “So I tried out pole dancing. It’s a really social activity. I’ve met a lot of girls here who I’m now close friends with.  And I like that it makes me feel sexy.”

A nightclub activity mostly considered the domain of strippers in the United States, pole dancing — but with clothes kept on — is nudging its way into the mainstream Chinese exercise market, with increasing numbers of gyms and dance schools offering classes.

The woman who claims to have brought pole dancing to China, Luo Lan, 39, is from Yichun, a small town in Jiangxi Province in southeastern China. Her parents teach physics at the university level.

Ms. Luo said she struggled in 20 different occupations — secretary, saleswoman, restaurateur and translator among them — before deciding to take a break. She traveled to Paris in 2006 for vacation. It was there that she first saw pole dancing.

“I wandered into a pub, and there was a woman dancing on the stage,” she said. “I thought it was beautiful.”

Those who embrace pole dancing for fitness are a snapshot of urban youths whose values are changing from those of their parents.

Jiang Li, 23, a pole dancing student; "A lot of people expect Chinese women to be subdued and faithful, that we should marry and take care of kids at an early age,” she said. “But I don’t think that way — I want to be independent. I’ve been studying traditional Chinese dance for many years, but this is totally different. I feel in control when I do this.”

-by Jimmy Wang

God bless fusion cooking, rule breakers and rule breaking, and cultural appropriation from all sides and in all things... and special blessings today on Luo Lan who took erotic performance art and turned it into a profitable aerobic exercise concept in a socially repressive country, bravo! 

So I survived my first crash...

There I was... heading down Bergen Street to get myself to Grand Jury Duty in the Borough Hall area. Just as I was crossing 4th Avenue, I looked left, and the van that cut across my path looked right, and we didn't see each other till we smashed together. I rolled to the ground, unhurt and full of adrenaline, and after we assessed each other we went our separate ways. It wasn't till later that I realized the back axle of bike was broken... but I walked away from that crash, so I have no complaints.

Bike riding in the city is a wonderful thing... if only there were no cars.

The New Me

Reading the NYT this morning, I found myself swept away in unbridled enthusiasm for a new sport... no, a new way of living.

In Adrspach (an area in the Czech Republic) there is a long history of real men living real lives... and the way they prove this to each other is not through the purchase of the latest technical gadget, nor through an ability to spawn numerous copies of biological self from the beleaguered wombs of their women folk, nor in the more typical fashion of participating in carefully modulated and commercialized and homogenized sports traditions like basketball, football(soccer), baseball, jai alai, football americano, cricket, etc. 

No... these men prove their truth by taking rock climbing to the next level... they climb to the top of tall rock towers, and then jump from one to the other, always striving to find the most difficult and most dangerous jump to perform... they jump, that is all, just jump. But take a look at this jump....

They jump when the situation is most dire, when the possibility for injury and death are most pronounced. This is no elfin-dance Triple-Jump like they perform at the Olympics... this is a jump of manhood. 

Boys climb the rock towers, and Men jump...

So... who wants to put their life on the line to prove themselves to a bunch of Czech adrenaline junkies and death-wish afficinados who have nothing better to do with their time than get drunk and dare each other into life-threatening situations? Will you risk it all to gain the socially constructed concept of "manhood", so that you can affix that title to the masthead of your personalized stationery/webpage for the rest of your life?

I'm on the next flight to Adrspach... are you with me?

 

The People Spoke, the Company Listened

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Robert,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all
the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the
next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

The Wyoming Circle

The Wyoming Circle: Starting from centrally located Riverton, going west to Dubois, to Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons, up thru Yellowstone National Park, to Cooke City (in Montana), back down through the mountains to Cody, to Thermopolis, and right back to little Riverton.... the Wyoming Circle. This is a trip I first went on in 1988 when I was 11 years old, when Yellowstone burned and burned... I remember the smoke from all the fires just starting to fill the sky as we left.

I returned to Yellowstone National Park twice more in my life before this year, but I was never lucky enough to travel "the Circle" again. This time I was able to share this wonderful trip with Jessica. This time it was snow, rather than smoke, that filled the skies of Yellowstone. This time... I saw grizzly bears.

Many thanks to Wesley James Bell, who carefully organized and narrated this trip for Jessica and I, and for good measure, even drove us the entire length of the trip. His knowledge of biology, geology, history, and local lore proved invaluable and indispensable. It would have been little more than a long car ride through pretty scenery without his presence and presentation. Thank you Porkchop, we couldn't have done it without you!

Wyoming 2008

Those Heartless Bastards

Netflix just sent the following email to my girlfriend, who is the primary account holder in our apartment, and who has been kind enough to share her account control with me by giving me my own profile and queue:

"We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature
that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account,
effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1,
2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile
Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change
will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our
customers.

If you have any questions, please go to
http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888)
638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

- The Netflix Team"

How the FUCK will taking away the already established and successful practice of separate Profiles help improve their website? Where will all my ratings and all my reviews and all my Netflix friends go to now? What did I do to deserve this suffering, this humiliation? Must my queue and my ratings now be mixed with those of another? No offense to my girlfriend's taste... but by my taste I will be recognized, and without purity of profile how can my taste be determined... those thousand plus films that I have rated on a five star scale system help create a vital part of the truth of my identity, of who I am to me and to others!!!

This aggression will not stand! Rise up fellow Netflixerians, and call them

                                                                 1 (888) 638-3549

and make your voices heard! Don't let them do this to us! Identities will be blurred and obscured, marriages will crumble under the stress of decisions, children will weep and gnash their teeth when dad's Film Noir shows up instead of their "Finding Nemo"... stop them before they ruin our lives (real and electronic)... you can make a difference... call now!

All Day at Work

It has come to my attention that there is a nasty rumor 

going around about me, and I want to dispel this 

patently false information before it gains any further 

semblance of authenticity. First, it has been said that I

took the day off of work this Friday, ostensibly to prepare 

for my trip to Wyoming. 

This was the plan as I originally designed it, but was 

not what actually ended up happening. If this 

misinformation was all that was being spread, I wouldn't 

bother to contradict it. It is neither here nor there. I work

hard, and if I need a day off to prepare for my vacation,

then so be it.

But sadly the vicious slander that has reached my ears, and 

probably yours, suggests a second fallacy which is that

I not only stayed home from work, but actually spent the

day home from work playing violent video games... 

specifically, GTA IV. 

This is a complete lie, and I have the photographic 

evidence to prove it. 

See below:

These pictures clearly show that I arrived early that morning

for work, like always, and left after the sun had already set,

again as per usual. That's just how I roll at work... dedicated,

focused, part of the team, present and at 100 percent every

day of the work week to make the Columbia experience the 

best it can possibly be for all of our guests.

I hope this has cleared up any confusion, and destroyed the 

false structure of lies being constructed against me by my 

enemies.

I am not paranoid.

Have a good night.