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Here’s the secret to surviving a 45-mile charity bicycle ride: get a flat tire 3 miles from the start. I got one, and was in the process of repairing it myself, when a “SAG” (“Support And Gear” or “Support Aid Group,” depending upon whom you ask) van rolled up with a professional who did it for me while I watched and enjoyed the cool morning air.

I should backtrack.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know I was participating in the Livestrong Challenge, a charity bike ride to support cancer research. There are a number of distances: a 10 mile, 45, 70, and 100. My boy Zak rode the 100, but because I value my life/knees/testicles, I was not planning to go that far. My homeskillet Sarah B, who happens to be Zak’s girlfriend, and her brother Kyle agreed to ride the 45. The original plan was that we’d stick together, but that proved very optimistic.

The Livestrong folks emailed out updates to the schedule, which revealed that we had to pick up a “race packet” with our bib number and some other things, and the only times that this could be done were on Saturday the 23rd, or Sunday the 24th between 6am and 7am, at Montgomery County Community College, which is 1) where the ride kicks off and 2) over an hour from my house.

In short, I had to be up at 4:30am Sunday in order to get up there, get my packet, meet with my peeps, and be ready and warm for the ride.

The drive up was pretty tame, since nobody was on the road, but was complicated by the fact that I had replaced all four of my car’s brakes the previous day and had not had time to drive the car the 100-200 miles needed to properly break them in. So if anyone had cut me off, there was a good chance everyone was going to die a fiery, screaming death, because I probably would not be able to stop in time. Nevertheless, I made it without incident, arriving around 5:35. I had time to kill, so I started scarfing down egg salad, and wandered over to the information tent to get in line for my packet. Bonus: nobody was there except for the people handing out packets, so I got mine right away. Bogus: now I had roughly 105 minutes to kill before the race kicked off, and I had no idea where my homies were.

Luckily, I had made plenty of beef jerky, so I was all set if I had to wait a long time.

A few text messages later it was determined the aforementioned homies were still at the hotel, so I read a cycling magazine I’d been given and tried to fill up on eggs (probably not the best move), eventually getting my bike loaded up and finally meeting Zak and Sarah and Kyle over by Sarah’s dad’s car. We made our way over to the starting point, making sure to be there by 7:30.

At 8am, they finally started making some stupid speeches that we couldn’t hear because the stage was a 1/4 mile distant. Lance Armstrong appeared, said something unintelligible, and then wandered off. Eventually they announced something that sounded like “Evrrlo hnret…GO!” and we deduced they were sending off the 100-milers, which took a while because there were something like 800 riders, Lance among them, and then the 70-milers, and finally we poor 45-mile participants were let loose around 8:15.

Sarah and Kyle and I had made absolutely sure to place ourselves at the back of the field; Kyle would probably be able to take off, ’cause he weighs approximately 75 pounds and appeared to be made entirely of protein, but Sarah and I knew we needed to start slow, and then continue slow, and finally finish slow. So we pedaled along carefully, trying to avoid running anyone over (it was a big crowd), and finally things started to thin out. Kyle said, “Man, I really want to attack this hill, but I don’t wanna leave you guys,” but I urged him on, and he disappeared into the crowd.

Sarah and I puttered along, but she was riding a mountain bike that couldn’t really hustle on the downhills, so she fell further behind, and I would wait, but finally she told me to just go, and I did. Got about two miles before I heard the tell-tale “fwap fwap fwap fwap” that indicated I was losing a tire. I looked back, and sure enough my rear was deflating with great gusto.

(My rear tire, I mean. Not my rear end. I’d like to see that deflate, but it doesn’t appear to be filled with air. Mostly shoo-fly pie and prime rib.)

I had a spare tube, so I stopped, got out my kit, and set about replacing it, which is when the SAG car rolled up, and a nice gentleman got out and did the job for me. It was a good thing he did, since he found the pin in the tire that I had missed, and got me going much faster than I would have by myself. Plus, I got to stand and enjoy my beef jerky and icy water.

Once that was done, I got back on and went on my merry way. Now there was no one in front of me that I could see, so I didn’t have to worry about bicicular (not a real word) traffic, so I could ride at my own slow pace, which I did until I reached the first rest station, which my odometer said was at mile 11. (Note: this later proved…inaccurate.) I ran across Sarah again, who had somehow passed me on the side of the road without seeing one another, and we loaded up on snacks and water and made off again. Sarah kept with me for a little ways, but after a while my powerful thigh muscles led me away. Just kidding; we found a long downhill and my sheer mass powered me down the slope.

Speaking of slopes: I topped out at somewhere around 38mph on this ride, going down an enormous hill. It doesn’t seem like that’s all that fast, but you have to realize that in a car, the tires have a contact patch (where the rubber meets the road) of 30-40 square inches per tire. Each of my bike’s tires met the asphalt in an area smaller than my wang. It’s…scary. Making it worse are the many people who don’t seem to realize that for every big hill we have to go down, we have to climb back up an equally large one, and it behooves one to build up as much momentum as one can; I’m flying down the hill at 35+, blowing by people taking up valuable road space who are holding on to their brakes and cruising at 20mph or less.

(Bike people, sadly, are no better at traffic maintenance than the average American driver; the concept of keeping to the right to stay out of the way of faster bikes is well-known but largely ignored. Unbelievable, and very frustrating.)

Going up hills was a big problem because I am not built for it. Good climbers are always skinny little guys who may not be long on leg muscle but are so light that they just scoot right on up. I weigh just shy of 250 pounds; going up hills just flat out sucks. A lot of people were having similar problems and remedied it by getting off and walking. I couldn’t do that, though; I didn’t mind stopping for little breaks, but I didn’t sign up for a 45 mile ride just to say I walked up all the hills. So I would go as hard up the hill as I could for as long as I could, and then would stop, put my feet down, eat some jerky, drink some water, and wait for the intense burning in my thighs to ease. Then I’d hop back on and get moving. Some climbs were so steep and long that I would do this two or three times. I passed the time while resting by cracking jokes with the walkers, like “Next year: Nebraska!” or “Who put this hill here? I’m going to have a word with Mr. Armstrong about this.” They’re not exactly knee-slappers right now, but let me tell you, they KILLED among the “exhausted and in staggering pain” demographic.

Cruising along, I was surprised to see how many people were just standing outside their homes to wave and clap as cyclists went by. Some people had set up their own small water stands, in addition to the sanctioned rest stops, just because they or someone they knew had cancer, and they wanted to help in some small way. It was rather moving to accept a free cup of ice-cold water from someone and have her thanking me.

Eventually I made it to the second rest stop, which appeared to be at the 22 mile mark, so I confidently sent a text message to HW to say I was halfway through. By this point it was about 10:30am, so my original plan to finish by noon was tossed by the wayside. I got moving again, and then climbed several of the largest hills I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it was like I was in Switzerland, and I made a pact with Jesus that if he let me finish I would totally stop taking His name in vain in front of elementary schoolchildren. (I’m trying, dangit.)

Then Jesus messed with me by making my rear tire pop again, this time with a loud BANG. I stopped just shy of an intersection where a nice policeman was directing traffic, and he came over to see if I could use some help. I told him I just needed to wait for a SAG van to replace my tube, and he said he could call for one, but the next rest stop was just about a half-mile away, and it was downhill. If I could carefully coast to it I wouldn’t have to wait.

So I did. Think it’s dangerous going downhill at 35mph? Try doing it at 7.5 on a flat rear tire. But I made it, and in fact they replaced the tube and the tread, which was described by the tech as “suspicious.” Going to refill my water bottles, I checked my odometer and was chagrined to discover that because of the hills I’d only really gone about 6 miles since the last stop. The good news: by my calculations I’d gone 28 miles in total, so I only had 17 to go! I was, like, 60% done! I checked my phone to see if HW had written back, and had a few congratulatory messages from her, but was saddened to see that Sarah B had had to bail out after a truck pulled out in front of her and she twisted her knee screeching to a halt. I felt pretty guilty, since I had told her, her brother, and her dad that I wouldn’t leave her behind, and…um…did. Twice, in fact. I hoped she wasn’t too badly injured, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it now.

So I got moving. I knew the next rest stop had been 11 miles from the beginning (about which, you may recall, I was incorrect). I believed myself to be 17 miles from the end, and since it was just a big out-and-back trip, I only had to go 6 more miles to the last rest station. I figured I’d stop, take a long rest, load up on jerky and water for the last (mercifully flat) stretch of the ride.

Imagine my surprise when I got to mile 34 and there was no sign of the rest station. Nor at mile 35, or 36. I was starting to worry I’d gotten off the course, but was still seeing signs directing bicyclists, as well as other riders. I worried most that I’d somehow gotten redirected onto the 70- or 100-mile courses, where I would die a painful and tragic death, I was sure.

Then, at mile 38, I came upon the station. As I loaded up on water, I overheard someone saying that there were only 9 miles left (not the 11 I thought), and I remembered: I had reset my odometer after unloading the bike from the car, but NOT after riding about two miles to warm up and look for Sarah B and her boys. So all my distance calculations were about 2 miles optimistic. I hadn’t gone 38 miles; only 36. And the first stop hadn’t been at 11 miles, it had been at 9. Oh well.

The last stretch was indeed largely climb-free, but at that stage of my exhaustion even the smallest hills required the slowest gear and a great deal of agony. Finally I started crossing roads that I remembered being close to the end, and by my corrected odometer I realized I was only two miles away, then one, and then I saw Montgomery County Community College. I had never been so eager to see an accredited institution of secondary education in my entire life. I ended up rolling into the finish at approximately 1:15, 5 hours after I started.

The end was a little emotional; they radio ahead your number so the announcer can look up your name and shout it over the PA system as you ride in, and there were literally hundreds of people clapping, waving, screaming, and having a high old time. There are actually two lanes for finishers: regular participants like me, and cancer survivors, who are greeted with flowers and extra adulation. Coupled with the fact that I was completely exhausted and excited to have finished, and I almost got a little choked up by it all.

I tried to track down Sarah B and her peeps, but never managed to; I went to the post-race party, where I kept getting dust in my eye as they introduced cancer survivors and entire teams of people who were riding for their grandfather or aunt or just a good friend. I got a beer, some pasta (eff low-carbing it, I was hungry), looked around for my friends (no dice), and headed home.

I did later find out that Sarah B didn’t hurt her knee too badly, and now she had something fun to brag about (apparently her parents already turned the story from “A pickup pulled out and I had to stop short” to “A mack truck cut me off and flung me into a ditch”), so all’s well that ends well, although frankly I still kinda feel like a dick. As usual.

On the other hand, I did successfully cycle 45 miles in 5 hours. So go me.

A big hearty thanks to everyone who donated; I’ll be sending out personal thanks over the next few weeks but would feel bad if you felt unappreciated in the meantime. So…THANKS!

Sarah and I went to Baltimore last weekend. Short version? Hella fun. Long version? Here we go:

We got up with Charles on Saturday morning at his usual time, aka 0-dark-30. We played with him a good bit, he jumped on my belly, I almost threw up, just laughs galore. Meanwhile, Sarah got all packed up and ready to go, and then dropped Charles off with her parents whilst I showered, did a little ironing, and packed.

She got back, we both used the bathroom like responsible adults, and got on the road. We were in East Baltimore in just over an hour, which was pretty remarkable, both the speed of the drive as well as East Baltimore itself. The place goes very suddenly from “horrifically seedy” to “heck of yuppie” in approximately a block, something we were to discover later in our walking travels.

We found reasonable parking ($20 for 24 hours) near our hotel, got checked in, and decided our best option for fun and frolic was to go to Fell’s Point. We had in fact selected our hotel in the belief that it was reasonably near Fell’s Point, but it was technically closest to the Inner Harbor. Either way, everything was pretty much in walking distance. So we hoofed it into Fell’s.

We expected to see a bunch of fun little shops and restaurants, and while there were a few of the former and a bunch of the latter, what there was more than anything else was bars. Sadly, few of them were my speed (quiet, probably expensive, full of dapper gentlemen in ascots and expensive sports coats and plasticine blondes with large white teeth), but we ventured into one that we had a coupon for from our hotel package, mostly because Sarah had to pee. It was named Max’s Taproom, and it was unpleasant. Loud, filled with post-graduate D-bags, and featuring skanky waitresses attempting to cash in on Hooters-style garb.

Hooters sounds like a great idea on paper; decent food, particularly good wings, and hot waitresses wandering around in tight clothing delivering the grub. Unfortunately, in practice, you leave the place unsatisfied. I’ve never been served by a waitress at a Hooters that had, you know, Hooters. They try and synthesize them by wearing brassieres that would be tight on a Chinese gymnast, but meh. Plus they wear enough makeup that you really have no idea what their facial features look like. Is that a mole, or a goiter? Who can say? And Max’s had nothing but Hooters cast-offs. It was depressing.

HW drained her urine tank and we scuttled out of there without having purchased a drink, for which I felt guilty a bit, until I had to scrape my feet on the sidewalk a few times to remove nasty beer stickum. We went across the street to the Greene Turtle to cool our heels, as we had more discount coupons for that. Went inside, saw a waitress who invited us to sit wherever, we said we’d be outside at a table that just opened up, and she said she’d be right out. So we sat outside for ten minutes until she finally poked her out of a nearby door and said, “Has anybody helped you?”

“No, not since you said you’d be right out,” I didn’t say.

“Not yet!” I actually said, cheerily, because I find in life that there is absolutely no sense in irritating someone who could spit herpes simplex-laden saliva into your drink if she senses her tip will be anything less than 25%.

The coupons specified that we could get a two-for-one drink deal if we ordered identical drinks, and this is where the complexity began: I have decided, as a result of tipping the scales north of 250 pounds, to go back on the low-carb diet. The only booze you can have (and they don’t recommend you have any) is straight stuff, because theoretically all the carbs in it have been turned to alcohol, which I guess doesn’t count as carbs for whatever reason despite the fact that it’s still pure calories. Whatever. Sarah agreed to drink whatever I planned to order, so I got us two vodka martinis. Then I drank hers, because she thought it tasted like brake fluid. I think she then ordered a beer. Might have been a rum-and-Coke. I honestly do not recall vividly, because if you’re keeping score I’d had most of two vodka martinis to this point.

I had a third, while we enjoyed some wings, and then asked for the bill. We had to do a bit of haggling with the check; the first time she brought it to us, none of our discounts had been added. The second time, the discounts had been applied to the wrong drink (costing us $3, but hey man, that’s three double cheeseburgers), but the third time, all was well, so I threw some cash at the bill and we went a-wandering yet again.

We tried to find some shops and things to look at, but aside from a gallery of photographs that were retouched to look like paintings (which I guess qualifies as art, in the same way that Photoshop-filtered puppy pictures are art) and a jewelry store where HW bought me a nice silver ring, there wasn’t much. Just bar after bar filled with drunks. Not that I’m much complaining; I’d had three martinis, after all, after not having had a drink in about a week, and was walking on air, or would have been had I not been so fat that the air was unwilling to support my heft.

We wandered north up Broadway a bit, and were bemused to discover that the quality of shops went from “10% off summer Silver” to “25% off all Hemp wear!” to “75% of weavs” in about a block. North of that, there be monsters. We came about smartly and headed back south.

After walking some more blisters into our feet, we decided to find a place to eat, and here was where the brilliant luck occurred: we had another coupon from our hotel good for $50 off of any one of three restaurants, and so we selected “Kali’s Garden,” which sadly has no website other than a few google links that seem to think it’s a Middle Eastern restaurant, which it is most definitely not.

Kali’s Garden is gourmet American cuisine done right. A good dose of seafood, of course; I had raw oysters that were YUMMMMMM, and bouillabaisse that was disappointing, although I don’t think that was the restaurant’s fault as much as me realizing that I don’t much care for bouillabaisse. Sarah had a filet that was like butter, although filet is rather hard to screw up. Even my incompetent hands can cook tenderloin to a state of scrumptiousness.

The service was, as you might expect at a place charging upwards of $32 for a basic entree, spectacular and friendly. Sarah closed the meal with crème brûlée that was quite fantastic, although again it’s difficult to screw up, while I polished off my 7th martini of the day and a free glass of champagne. Then we stumbled back to the hotel.

It was early yet, only about 7:30pm; we were tired of walking, but still too ramped up to sleep. So we wandered the Inner Harbor, did a spate of shopping (we bought a little wind-up crab for Charles, which he inexplicably hates because once it’s wound up, it can’t be turned off), and decided the sensible thing to do was go back to the hotel and get more drinks.

The hotel featured three on-site establishments: a Ruth’s Chris franchise, something called “McCormick and Schmicks” or something like that (it seemed profoundly shady, and we avoided it) and a small bistro called “My Panini.” We figured our best shot at cheap fare was at My Panini, particularly since we discovered it had a functioning bar. We wandered in and sat, and a nice gentleman handed us two menus. We decided what we wanted to snack on and drink, and waited for service.

And waited.

And waited a weeeee bit longer.

Finally a breathless young man came over, apologized profusely, took our drink and food orders, and then sprinted back to the bar and disappeared. We watched the bartender, not 15 feet from us, pour our drinks and sit them on the edge of the bar to get nice and warm, and waited for our waiter, who finally came back and delivered my salad (disappointing) and the drinks. We drank those and chatted, and he came back after a bit to get a further order, which we gave him, and he disappeared, such that we finally tired of waiting and simply got up to the bar to get our own drinks and place our own orders. On the plus side, we didn’t get charged for something like 3 of the 5 drinks we had, so I didn’t undertip too harshly.

We headed back upstairs and passed out like a hurricane.

The next morning, we planned to go see the Maryland Science Center, so we chugged some tylenol against our staggering hangovers and went downstairs to My Panini (where we were eligible for free breakfast) to fortify ourselves. We were told upon entrance that our coupons were good for a free cold breakfast, which amounted to cereal and fruit (neither of which I could eat), or $5 off of the hot breakfast, bringing the price down to $6.99 per person, plus drinks, which were exorbitant: $2.19 for a cup of coffee that tasted of seawater? What is this insanity?

My Panini, I’ll say this once, and you should listen: suck it. Your prices are ridiculous, the food is disappointing, and your service is an abomination before the Lord.

After this disheartening experience, we decided that the Maryland Science Center was too great a task for the day, so we decided to wander the Inner Harbor in daylight, do some more shopping, take some pictures of various ocean-going vessels, and partake of as many tasty snacks as we could. It was a limited success; there were certainly plenty of people wandering around, though many of them were bums hassling the tourists for “spare” change. We did get to “enjoy” a “juggler” who did a minimum of juggling and a maximum of insulting his audience in a way that was 10% funny and 90% awkward. I’m glad he spent the first 5 minutes of his act reminding everyone that he’d appeared on Jay Leno and David Letterman and yet had time to come down and do his routine for the moron tourists of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. That really made us want to open our wallets. I don’t think the guy made 50 cents all day, which is definitely not nearly as good as when the Y-chromes went to Baltimore my senior year and did an impromptu five-song concert in the middle of the…campus? whatever it is- and netted a small fortune, enough to keep us pretty much hammered the rest of the day, which was a spectacular idea since we had a concert that evening and I ended up throwing up on a frat couch at the after-party and got everybody kicked out.

But that is another story for another time.

Once we got our fill of wandering, we tried to find a nice little bistro for snacks, but unfortunately there’s nothing in the Inner Harbor but chain restaurants, so we settled for a Houlihan’s where we had Diet Cokes and mediocre spinach dip.

And then we drove home.

So HW came home from the grocery store this afternoon, with food, dry goods, and feminine items galore. The latter, oddly enough, appeared to have been purchased third-hand from an offshore supply of East German products.

“Dude, where did you buy those tampons,” I asked. “Communism?”

“Whaddaya mean?” she replied.

“I’m willing to cheap out dollar-store-style on certain things; gift-wrap, Christmas decorations, et cetera. But things that get inserted into my orifices? You know, I shell out the cash for the premium-grade.”

“I used to be that way, but…” she trailed off, and it was clear she had sacrificed her hoohah on the altar of cheapiedom.

Here is a short list of items that I will only buy namebrand. I’m sure you have a list of your own; compare and contrast.

• Razors
• Birth control products
• Beer
• Aluminum foil
• Toothpaste
• Adoption agencies
• Financial services
• Hookers
• Politicians (the last two can probably be combined)
• Brazilian wax technicians

What’s on your list of products or services you won’t cheap out on?

Here’s an update, bulleted with a blue sky:

• The LiveSTRONG Challenge donations continue apace! A big thanks to everyone who has donated. You’ll all be getting much more personal thanks from me than just a mention on my blog, don’t worry. (The promised hugs will most definitely be forthcoming.) I’ve been training, including doing some ridiculous hills (because the route’s out in Montgomery County and promises to be fluctuous). I’m still working up my distance; the furthest I’ve ever gone is about 20 miles (the route is 45 miles), but I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to finish. For one thing, I’m riding with my homegirl Sarah and her brother, and for another, the course opens at like 8am and doesn’t close until somewhere around 4. Even my fat butt can finish a 45 mile bike ride in 8 freakin’ hours. I’ll be disappointed if it takes more then 3.5, although my pace will be dictated by whomever in our party is the slowest; I’m not leaving anybody behind. Of course, the odds are I will be the one getting left behind, which is fine with me. I ain’t holdin’ anybody up. If you’d like to donate and make my sacrifice worthwhile, use the link above and chip in some ducats, doggle.
• Oklahoma! wrapped up, I have something like 3,000 pictures from two photographers (Kate and myself) to go through and pick the cream of the crop. It may take some time, so if cast members are coming here wondering where the heck the pictures be at: patience is a virtue. I won’t even have the full set of pictures until at least the cast party on Saturday ’cause Lord knows we need documentary evidence of that freakish dance party FOR. REALS.
• Charles sings the ABC song as follows: “A B C D F G H I J K L P Q R S two Vs double X Y Z Now know ABDs next sing me!” It’s priceless.

That’s what I’ve got. Challa.

As usual, I’m about a year behind hearing about things, so I’m sure all you have seen this: Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, a 75 minute (so block out the time, people) lecture by Professor Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon. At the time of the lecture, Dr. Pausch had been fighting pancreatic cancer for just over a year, and had been told about a month beforehand that tumors had turned up in his liver and other organs, giving him approximately 3-6 months. He beat that prediction by nearly a half-year, dying early this morning at 47.

I don’t want you folks to get the idea that because I’m riding in a cancer-related charity race in just 30 days that this is going to turn into a “cancer blog;” rest assured today’s subject matter is pretty much coincidence. This isn’t even really a cancer post, except that it was inspired by a cancer victim. This is a hell of a lot more self-centered: the Biannual “WTF is Matt Hearn doing with his life?” Self-Examination.

Watching that video, you sense immediately that Dr. Pausch was simply a fantastic human being. He could have done anything; it is to geeks’ benefit worldwide that he chose computer science. It occurs to me suddenly that if he’d entered medicine he might well have cured the cancer that took his life. His accomplishments, as well as his earth-shaking charisma, are due exclusively to one thing: he was absolutely fearless. There aren’t a lot of people who are going to take an opportunity to lecture and start out by doing a bunch of pushups; there aren’t a lot of people who would go into the lengthy details of their life in such a revealing way; there certainly aren’t a lot of people who would interrupt a college lecture to make everyone sing happy birthday to their spouse.

Fearlessness like that makes it possible to be supremely creative. I myself am terrified of failure, not because I worry that people are going to think less of me (although that’s certainly a factor), but because I’m worried that I’m going to waste hours/days/months/years of my life pursuing something only for it not to work out, for that time to be wasted. The end result is that I start a number of small projects, which I abandon as soon as I realize it’s going to be, OMG WTF, hard.

I can knock out a short blog post, because that’s maybe 30-60 minutes of effort and I know it’ll be well received by both of my readers (Hi, Dad!) if I bring a little of the funny. But write a novel, something I’ve been wanting to do for years? I type maybe 5-10 pages, get frustrated because it’s crappy, and quit. I’ve done this at least four times in the last 6 months.

Dr. Pausch, on the other hand, teamed with a Drama professor to develop an entire Master’s degree program that no one at any other college had even thought of. Sort of a combination of graphic design, virtual reality, animation, and a lot of computing concepts I don’t even remotely comprehend. It’s been around for several years now, and it still nothing like it is appearing at other schools, so Carnegie Mellon is simply creating their own labs for it around the world; Australia, Singapore, and others.

He also led the team that developed Alice, which is an object-oriented programming language entirely designed to teach kids how to program. Except, and this is the kicker, it doesn’t seem like programming; the kids feel like they are creating detailed computer animations. It’s a revolutionary way to teach programming, centered on Dr. Pausch’s belief that the best way to teach someone something is to make him think he’s not learning at all.

I’m sure along the way he tried some things that didn’t work. But he didn’t care, because he learned from every failure, and was simply unafraid of not succeeding. This gave him the ability to work staggeringly hard.

Also, he knew what he wanted. At the beginning of the lecture, he lists his childhood dreams, and establishes exactly what he did to try and accomplish each one of them. The only one he missed out on, at the time of the lecture? Playing in the NFL. Within a few weeks, the Pittsburgh Steelers caught wind of this and invited him to team practice. The man set out a list of tasks at a young age, and completed each one.

I still, at thirty years of age, don’t know what I want to do with my life. This is remarkably common among my friends, I find, and is unbelievably frustrating. The relentlessly negative portion of my conscious mind likes to remind me on occasion that I’m never going to amount to anything, because if I was I’d know what I want to do. Unsurprisingly, this is a bit of a damper on the creative process.

The only thing more terrifying than having a ton of talent and not knowing what to do with it? Having a ton of talent and being too scared to use it.

Great, I’m batting a thousand.

Randy, you were a great teacher, great husband, undoubtedly great father, and most of all great man by any measure. You are already missed. May we all (especially, you know, I) learn from your staggering example.

Here’s the thing: I’m pretty fat. I mean, if you haven’t seen me lately, and all you know of me is my Brigadoon pictures from a ways back, then you might be surprised at the chub that has made itself welcome on my front. I just don’t do, you know, activities. So you know that, if I were to do a major athletic event, there’d better be a dang good reason.

Which brings me to the Livestrong Challenge, a day of events in Philadelphia that include a 5K (not doing that), a 10 mile bike ride, and a 45 mile bike ride. I have volunteered (and even paid for the privilege) to ride in that. There is a problem, however, in that I need to raise $250 to qualify. The race is 8/24, so it’s gotta happen by then. The good news is this: according to Facebook, I have approximately 375 friends. If they all chip in a dollar, I’m gravy like Thanksgiving giblets!

I’ve set what I believe to be a rather conservative goal of $500. I figure a few people (my parents, maybe) will be willing to chip in a lil bit wuxtree, plus people that I stop on the street and say crazy things to will probably give me quarters to make me go away. Either way, you need to give the Livestrong Foundation some cash via my webpage: http://philly08.livestrong.org/matthearn. Go do it, man, it actually does benefit cancerous individuals and their families. And if you don’t, and I don’t raise a lot of money, then when I have a coronary at mile 28 my obituary will be insufficiently glowing. Unacceptable. I’ll put a link over in my list of, um, links, so you’ll be reminded every time you come to matthearn.com, something you should be doing hourly, because even though my track record is usually twice-weekly posts with occasional month-long disappearances, I might start posting hourly! Anything’s possible! I might even blog the race!

I’ll probably be too busy passing out. Oh well.

So the pictures of Charles that I promised would be up last Wednesday or Thursday are up on Tuesday the following week. Don’t let anybody tell you I’m on time, because they would be UNCORRECT.

Click here for the rad. Party on!

Dr. Tea-Gar pointed out in a comment to my last post that I was horribly remiss to not report the birth of my niece. Yeah, I am dumb. Somehow, the birth of my parents’ first granddaughter slipped my mind. And I wasn’t even drinking at the time! Of course, statistics show that I actually have a more reliable memory when I’m half in the bag.

Anyway. Moving on:

I would like to present Kathryn Amelia, born at 8 pounds 1 ounce, 20 inches long, on July the First.

(Link goes to Shutterfly, where those of you who are so inclined could order prints. It’s a 10MP shot, so it should inflate to just about poster-sized, although it’ll be grainy ’cause it’s ISO1600.)

Wow, it’s been like 3 weeks and a day. That is pretty sad, for someone who prides himself on…well…I’m not sure what I pride myself on. Food consumption, I guess, and I’m also remarkably good at growing zits.

Anyway, you might be curious about what’s been going on, but probably not. The new job really has me hoppin’, and I’m loathe to do anything but, you know, actually work, because I’d like to keep my job. (At CSC getting fired would have been almost a pleasure, so I did a significant portion of my blogging from the office.) The Brandywiners show (“Oklahoma!”) has me at one rehearsal or another almost every night, and we haven’t even gone out to Longwood (the location of the outdoor theater) yet. Things are gonna get mad hectic. MAD. HEC. TIC. TAC. TOE.

That went to a weird place.

Anyway, some quicky notes:

• I love my new MacBook. (You may have read about it in an earlier post.) There’s all kinds of radness associated with it, and I finally managed to get all my favorite programs installed. Woo! Woo. If you’ve got the means (they’re roughly twice as expensive as a comparable PC), I highly recommend picking one up.
• I finally got around to starting to use Shutterfly, bringing me into approximately 2004. I’m catching up, I swear! Anyway, you can hit up matthearn.shutterfly.com to look at some recent pictures, and even download or order quality prints of ’em if you’ve of a mind to.
• While I’m in the picture-editing mode, hopefully I’ll have new pictures of Charles to put up in the next day or two. I mean, I have the pictures; hopefully they’ll be up. If you’re curious, he’s the size of a prize calf. It’s like feeding a full-grown St. Bernard, except blonder and louder.

Yeah, that’s what I got. Hopefully I’ll see you in less than 3 weeks. No promises, though.

So: my homey Shaun TC is in the cast of “In The Heights,” which you may or may not know is up for something like 11,304 Tony awards. (Okay, it’s just 13. Still.) You know what that means? Running diary. OH HECK YES. I should warn you; I was hard pressed to keep up with events, what with Whoopi being out of control and HearnWife constantly talking to me. So things are a little…”stream of consciousness.” Also I may have been drinking.

• The Lion King…meh. Meh? Yeah, meh. It was a great Disney Movie because James Earl Jones, Matthew Broderick, and Jeremy Irons were involved. As a musical with a bunch of no-names? Meh.
• Laurence Fishburne adds nothing but class. He’s like Sidney Poitier 2.0. Except where Mr. Poitier played Detective Virgil Tibbs, Laurence played Cowboy Curtis.
• Crybaby: The Musical? Really? Wow. The only redeeming thing about the movie was Johnny Depp, and I remember being sadly disappointed that he didn’t get shot. I have to say, the guy playing Crybaby would NOT enjoy prison. Because of all the RAPE. He would definitely be somebody’s TOTALLY SWEET GIRLFRIEND.
• Nice to see that the guy that played Will’s boyfriend on “Will and Grace” is still working as something other than an EMT or cop. I think he played a blue-collar public servant in 34 straight crappy TV dramas.
• The one guy that apparently missed a memo and showed up in white tie just made me think: why isn’t anybody wearing a white jacket? It’s after Memorial Day, right? I think everything that’s wrong with American can be traced to folks not owning and wearing formal wear when warranted and men not wearing hats.
• HOLY CRAP BISHOP BRENNAN FROM FATHER TED WON A TONY! Seriously, being one of maybe 3 Americans that recognized him has made my life worthwhile.
• Boo Counting Crows guy. Holy over-rated. (Sorry, all my friends that are huge Crows fans.)
• Who, uh, is Stew? And what is this “Passing Strange?” Because it’s, uh, not so great. The best I can say is that the one girl’s “English” accent made me laugh a little. Amsterdam seems to be involved. Does this makes sense if you’re high? Per…haps. HW: “This is stupid. Fast forward.” Done, and done.
• Nice! John Lithgow! Crap, he started talking, that ruined it. Oh good, he’s being ironic; that saved it. A little bit. Nice, the first Tony that In The Heights is up for! Boo, South Pacific’s guy won it. (Best Director.) Why does this guy sound like the creepy guy from “Back To You?”
• Jack Klugman? I thought he was dead! Oh, he just SOUNDS dead. Does he even have lungs? I think I saw a gill.
• Diesel, here comes “Gypsy.” I have heard incredible things, and plan to try and seduce a producer for tickets when I visit NYC later this week.
• Patti LuPone…uh…holy crap. Yeah, gonna try and see that, and soon, before she blows out a kidney singing that.
• Now that we’re on commercial, I can note the following: everyone talks about Patti LuPone’s acting and star power, but I gotta tell you, based on what she just sang, she is a simply fantastic musician. Diction, pitch, dynamics, all that. Spectacular.
• Hehehe Whoopi in “Phantom Of The Opera.” C’mon, go for the high note! Wow, I can’t believe they bothered to rebuild that set just for 15 seconds of gag.
• Hot. They’re going through the stuff they gave out before the telecast started, and “In The Heights” won for Best Choreography and Best Orchestrations! I can say firsthand: both those things were phatty phats. I have seen them. And then I walked and danced on the stage. People were impressed.
• Good to see Nathan Lane getting work. He’s so…shy.
• Wait, Duncan Sheik scored “Spring Awakening?” How about that. And here I thought he was a one-hit wonder. Here’s what I can say: he’s not even remotely funny. He just tossed a joke out that the audience wasn’t sure what to do with, because he had all the comedic timing of MY SCROTUM. (Actually that’s not true; my coin-purse is hilarious.)
• Nice!!! “In The Heights” just won for best lyrics, and the guy is rapping. Fantastic. He needs his hat, though. Nice! A shout-out for the hat AND Stephen Sondheim. The whole thing was actually kinda touching; normally you want a winner to act like I’d been there before, but his whole “holy crap this is unpossible” rap came across mad authentic. That’s right: he’s the Barack Obama of the Broadway Stage.
• South Pacific: Emile. Uh…that particular Emile wouldn’t have looked at Nellie Forbush twice. Or even once, because he would have been trying to have vicious animal sex with Lieutenant Cable. There’s nothing wrong with that, but next time let’s try and find someone a little more manly? The guy has a hot voice, though, I’ll give him that. (Update: later on he won best actor in a musical production, which is actually probably true because acting heterosexual was a SERIOUS stretch for him.)
• Did Nellie Forbush just smell a hat? I’m kinda thrown here. She sounds a little old. And the one girl in the flesh-colored bathing suit appears to be simply naked. Which is disappointing, compared to actual nudity.
• Whoopi just came onstage as Mary Poppins in the worst-disguised flying wires ever. Giggles all around.
• Kristen Chenoweth just made a “Defying Gravity” (a “Wicked” reference, if you were heretofore unware) joke that pained me. Then she stuck her hand in her armpit as if she thought that was a Polish Knee-Slapper. I’d assume she was high, but no, she’s just stupid.
• Barry Bostwick! I could not be more excited! He once played George Washington. Did you know that? I did. I bet you did not. He’s introducing “Grease,” which means I hate him! Hate him. I hate “Grease.” Have I mentioned that? Yeah. You know how you hate racism, or terrorism, or Hitler? I hate “Grease.” Watching this may well give me a stroke. Even worse, they’re doing a number that was NOT IN THE ORIGINAL SHOW. IT CAME FROM THE MOVIE. CAN YOU BE ANY MORE CRAPPY. I say no.
• I hate Grease so much.
• One of the Grease actors appears to have POLISHED THE ASS OF HIS JEANS. Hate.
• Dang! The “Gypsy” guy beat out the “In The Heights” guy for “Featured Actor.” Now I have to see “Gypsy” ’cause the “In The Heights” dude SLAYED. Gotta love the Gypsy guy for bringing back the Hitler moustachio, though.
• Marisa Tomei came out to introduce something with what could best be described as a “natural” look, and said: “One of the wonders of theater is that it is a shared experience.” HW: “Yeah…makeup can be a shared experience too.”
• Oh good. Disney didn’t irritate me enough with “The Lion King,” they had to do a “Little Mermaid” show too. It’s sad that there so many starving actors that they can staff these ABOMINATIONS. HW: “I thought [Ariel] was scary. And boring.” Yeah, even the red hair couldn’t save her.
• “A Catered Affair:” I don’t know Kate Prince, but I can say that she hit a loud note of some kind and my left ear started bleeding. Bad times.
• Megan Mullaly! I’ve always been fond of her. Heheheh…she made a penis-related joke. “Deep Love.” I like. HW is not as much a fan, ’cause she hasn’t seen “Young Frankenstein” (the movie), which is sad for her.
• Whoopi’s introducing a bunch of sets from plays I didn’t see…makes it kinda hard to keep up. Luckily, as it turns out, she’s funny! Has no eyebrows, though.
• David Morse! YES! I love him. Dunno why, just do. ACCEPT IT.
• There’s a play of “The Thirty Nine Steps?” Somehow I missed that. Looks…freaky. Exciting. I’m excited.
• I feel similarly about Gabriel Byrne as I do about David Morse, except FAR more overtly sexually.
• Hee..the chick that won for best Director of a Play has a tattoo that she deeply regrets. I think it was something commemorating “Where Eagles Dare.” Somewhere, Richard Burton is DRINKING HEAVILY.
• Mary Louise Parker is hot, but she’s either stoned, or that glittery black thing on the side of her head is a REALLY BORING alien that has rooted into her brain and taken it over. Because she’s about as lively as the chunks of hair and flesh stuck to my wife’s leg-razor.
• Is it just me, or is it totally awesome refer to The Scottish Play as “The Scottish Play” even when they aren’t involved in a production thereof? Fantastic.
• Mark Rylance of “Boeing-Boeing” SLAYED me. Sarah found him boring. This resulted in an argument. Yay marriage!
• Lin-Manuel is up ons! GO TC GO GO TC Yes. That show is ridiculous. Compared to all the other stuff, I don’t see how it could miss on a big win, even up against Gypsy.
• Wow. “South Pacific” is tearing it up, which is kind of a pity, because that show is SO 1946. Right? I mean, what could it really bring to the table? Wow, racism against Indonesian natives! That really speaks to me! (No, it doesn’t.)
• I like the guy presenting with Harry Potter. He’s quick. ON THE BALL, if you would believe it.
• Whoa! Look at Mandy Patinkin’s face! That beard is…nautical.
• I gotta say; Sondheim. Certainly interesting. But doesn’t do much of anything for me, to be honest. It seems like he sacrificed melody for a feeling of “Hey! Listen to how weird this is! I would like another Tony!” People are willing to let this slide, for some reason. Me? Nay.
• HW on Glenn Close: “Severe.” Uh…yeah. She looks like she’s been sharpened.
• Lily Tomlin’s not dead? Wow!
• Can’t say I’m excited about “Xanadu,” since the movie was, at best, homicidal. (Everybody that watched it died of suck.) Oh good, rollerskates. I…uh…am fast-forwarding past this horrific crap. Uh…why did that guy walk up from the audience? And now there’s a pegasus dropping from the season? I need a grenade. Was that supposed to be ironic? That was bad.
• Oh, that’s Anthony Rapp? I just remember him from “Road Trip.” I don’t hate Rent as much as I hate Grease, but it’s reasonably close. Take it from me: if you want to see Rent, just go get tickets to La Boheme at the Met. Or even at a local regional opera company. It’s just like Rent, except not stupid. Though, I gotta say; the 525,600 minutes song is catchy. Hellacatchy. Not “Quando m’en vo” catchy, but clearly good enough to hoodwink thousands of Musical Theater fans. Seriously, if you’re willing to drop $60 to see Rent but won’t drop the same amount to see opera att the Met, you’re basically saying “I want to seem like I enjoy culture without actually having to expose myself to it.” You probably also like Jack Johnson, who I’d like to see reenact the rock-crusher scene in “The Temple Of Doom.”
• “Liza Minelli” and “Short Skirt” are not phrases that should EVER go together. She is definitely turning into her mother as she gets older; Judy had the good sense to die young, though. HW: “Is her bra supposed to be hanging out like that?” Yeah…I think that was intentional. In a related story, I just threw up on my socks.
• Wow, the chick from Xanadu is BEAT. She needs less teeth and more lips. I kept wondering if a second mouth was going to come out, all Alien-style.
• Go Patti LuPone! HW: “Yeah, like nobody knew that was coming. Certainly wasn’t gonna be that Xanadu b****.” Don’t let anybody tell you HW isn’t profound.
• Best Musical to “In The Heights!” Hell yeah! Fantastic. If “Xanadu” had won I might have torched something. I’d just like to poit out that I saw the show that wont the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical before it actually opened because of my connections.

A successful night! “In The Heights” pulled down Best Choreography, Best Orchestration, Best Original Score, and Best Musical. Mad shout-outs to Shaun and his castmates for being AWESOME.