C’mon y’all

Yep…like a great ball of North Korean bluster-cluck, I started the year with a saber-rattling bang. Man, did I have plans. This was going to be the big year of the First Loser comeback. Well, um, no, that’s not happening any time soon. I’ve been busy man…busy packing it on and skating less and less.

But, unlike New Jersey’s Donut Swilling Governor, I’m not revealing any short-cut gastric surgeries to undo the damage of a few months over-indulgence in Russell Stover’s Pectin Jelly Beans and Pizza.

Yes, I have no plans to run for anything. Or to anything. Imma gonna eat this skate – nom, nom, nom.

Yes, I’m tired of watching my mid-section gyrate like Shakira’s hips when I brush my teeth shirtless. I’m not going under the knife or making the same mistake I did a few years ago with shakes & supplements. No, I’m shedding the belly shimmy the hard way…healtier dietary choices and Shaun T’s Insanity.

The program is freaking awesome. Really. No weights, no supplements (although they’ll try and sell you a recovery drink), no BS. Just a straight-up, 60 day course in plyos, cardio and sweet pain. Yes – a mainstream plyo workout, 100% skater friendly!

And it’s working. For me, at least. Going into my third week, here are my unvarnished Fit Test results:

Now, granted, I’m not quite as out of shape as I make myself out to be (or AM I?) But the chick in the DVD does better than I do so I still have a way to go. Nonetheless, the graph you’re looking at represents eight minutes lived the hard way. But they’re eight minutes that leave me with an incredible sense of accomplishment, so they’re totally worth it. In fact, every workout I’ve done so far feels that way, not just the bi-weekly tests. You get to the end of a daily workout and you’re totally amazed that you’ve done this thing. Even if you can’t keep pace with the hot-bods on the screen (oh yes, there are a few that even Speedy Weezy is looking at saying, “Dad, I think she’s sexy, if that’s what sexy is.”) you go your own pace and feel totally spent at the end of the workout. Spent in all the best meaning of that word. You’ve given everything you have, nothing left in the tank, and it’s good. Look at some of the regular exercises:

Power Jacks
Heisman’s
Power Knees
Globe Jumps
Level 1 & 2 Exercises
Suicides
Mummy Kicks
Moving Push Ups
C Sits
Butt Kicks
Mountain Climbers
Floor Sprints
Log Jumps
Switch Kicks

The list goes on and on. It’s not insane, it’s freaking NUTS. It’s high-intensity interval training. It’s pounding it out as hard as you can, with 30 seconds rest at the end of a series of exercises, then do it again, just, you know, harder and faster than last time.

Another great aspect of the program is it doesn’t take a lot of time. 30-45 minutes a day, 6 days a week. I tell you this, I’ve never looked more forward to having a day of rest as I do now. But really, that rest day is 26.2 mile trail skate day, and believe me, after spending the week putting on the hurt, the trail seems like a trip down light-weight lane.

So this is where my training is this year. I’m committed to Insanity for the next 45 days or so. Or should I be committed for doing this? I’ve been looking at the month 2 schedule, it gets worse. Or better, depending on your sadomasochistic tendencies. We’ll see in a couple of months if I’m as excited about it as I am right now.

Tell you what…if I do stick with this thing, I’m gonna post those unflattering “before” pics with my buff “after” pics. That way, this site will finally get pulled down for obscenity and I’ll be done with it and have more time to skate.

Happy Valentine’s Day

I skate because I love…

Happy Valentine’s Day

Smoking J’s

Like a blue-meth head tearing out the carpet looking for that elusive last rock, I follow odd notions out to extreme ends. It’s not like I’m sitting here smoking play-doh, nylon and carpet-cleaner, but that’s not something as far out as this theory: If you want to be a WINNER in this sport of ours, you need to change your name. But only if your current nom-de-skate doesn’t start with the letter “J”.

I got it where it counts now, boyee.

Being a pareidoliaphile (pron.: /pærɨˈdoʊliəphile/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə-phile) I’ve discovered the best kept secret in the sport. I’m tellin’ ya, where there’s smoke, there’s crack:

Joey Mantia
Jim Larson
Jordan Malone
Justin Stelly
Jarrett Paul
Jake Powers
Jorge Botero
Jeremy Anderson
Jondon Trevena

All champions. Coincidence? I think not. Perhaps it’s the testosterone fueled phallic nature of the letter itself, but seeing this list, one thing is clear: my uncanny ability to take vague and random stimulus and perceive it as something significant is finally gonna pay big dividends. I’m officially changing my name to Jagger, so I can bust the moves that’ll land my butt on the podium, ahead of you.

Off to listen to some Dub-Step backwards and find hidden messages that’ll unlock the secret that’ll enable me to become the first male roller-girl in the NSC. Dream big.

Gettin’ Bootie

Crazy Glenn Koshi is the only guy I know who’s got more bootie than he knows what to do with. He’s flush with lycra and neoprene love. He’s been keeping your ankles blister-free as long as Lance Armstrong’s been denying he’s a doper. And as costs have gone up year after year, he’s done the right thing by us and kept his prices steady. Well, apparently, the Feds have figured out that his profit margin was just way too high, and now they’re looking to him to bail the country out. Yes, as a part of the fiscal cliff compromise, Crazy Glenn is taking it in the sport shorts, and passing on the tough-love to you…

Boehner soon recognized he was dealing with Glenn the Metal God and decided to tax him an extra 666%. Pelosi just wanted to bed him.

The Man has come knockin’ one too many times, and Glenn’s at the point of having to pass the cup to you, the hard-working, middle-class skater. It could be worse, but knowing how tough things are out there, he’s giving us a head’s up:

Effective Feb. 1, 2013, Ezeefit are going to have a price increase of $1 per pair of the Ankle Booties and Full Foots. You’re getting the inside scoop here, and you’re getting the chance to stock up before the prices go through the roof. Place your orders before 2/1/13 and avoid the extra charge. But you need to act fast!

Tell those schmucks in Washington D.C. to go balance the budget, offset the deficit and reduce our debt somewhere else. Stick it to The Man and get your orders in now, at ezeefitsports.com, for God’s sake, before it’s too late! For God, Country and Bite-Free Ankles Everywhere!

Shorts…

Plan on winning and the rest will come.

That said, do you really know how to plan?

Afterburner engaged

My Facebook newsfeed is cluttered with status updates from a lot of those “I have nothing to do all day but post memes” profiles that I jump on to steal from and re-post sos I looks *relevant* to all my FB Friends. The memosphere I subscribe to is a vast wonderland – a colorful playground of the glib and snarky. Well-selected images of cunning pets, maniacal babies, Victorian drunkard folk art, 50′s commercial kitche, fools in unfortunate situations and teenagers standing in the bathroom with their iPhones wearing facial contortions that look like they’ve been sucking Atomic Warhead Sour Candy dipped in peanut butter. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Gonna show her my Jiffy Face.” Mmmwwwaaahhhhh!

How you like me now?

Moron, oh, I mean, more on memes later. So…I made the decision right before New Year’s to go vegetarian for 4 months, as a test. A colleague suggested I watch Forks Over Knives, a documentary about how with what we’re eating we’re lining our pipes with enough sludge to make the New York City Sewer System look like a clean, un-crowded out-of-the-way-place you’d want to take a first date to impress her. I’ve never been one for watching medical footage on television, but when I saw the scene when they extract a tube of plaque from a guy’s main artery, and another scene where they conduct a bypass operation, I couldn’t help but think that maybe it would be a good idea to consider what the filmmakers were saying – namely that animal fat & processed foods are killing us and that maybe I should consider healthier eating alternatives. So, being a guy who likes to jump right in on the next great idea, I did what any red-blooded meat-eater would do starring down the barrel of another hasty decision, I celebrated by going out for one last burger with “The Fam” to Five Guys Burgers & Fries. That was the best damned burger I’ve ever had…

3 days into it, had a Marshmallow Peep and blew the whole thing. Damned things have Gelatin in them. According to Wiki-Know-It-All, Gelatin is a translucent, colorless, brittle (when dry), flavorless solid substance, derived from collagen obtained from various animal by-products. Not just for breakfast anymore! So much for the technicalities. I didn’t realize till after, so it wasn’t like I ran stark raving mad for the nearest In-N-Out Burger to gorge. In my mind, that’s not a reset. I’m in this to win. Or wind, I should say, which is the point of this post…stereotypes about vegetarians and truth in memes.

Here’s a surprise…the vegetarian diet gives you gas. I knew this beforehand, and it didn’t scare me off (“PullMyFinger” is my middle name) butt wholly shite, I had no idea HOW gaseous I’d become. Gaseous Clay is my new boxing name. I break like the wind and stink to high heaven. My farts were never particularly odiferous, but now, bow-wow-wow-yippy-yo-hippy-stench do they reek! Seriously…no pinching a loaf on the sly in my office anymore. It’s my busy season at work, and I’ve already had a few unfortunately timed “drive-by’s” by key executives right after I’ve popped the cork on a vintage veggie boof-bouquet. Gotta get up and get myself to a safe place before the spoiled slippage seeps. Seeping isn’t quite right. I mean, yes, sometimes. But they’re packing more force, like the Psi has been cranked to 11. Hard to control and man they break bad. Really. Freaking. Nasty.

It was the same week that I sniffed out a “FART FACTS” meme that was loaded with fun nuggets of intelligence on flatulence…

- Vegetarians fart more than non-veggies (I now have proof)
- Termites fart most of all (buggers)
- Most humans fart 14 times per day (that’s an average and I’m a high-end outlier)
- You cannot suffocate in a chamber filled with your own fart gas (time for a Dutch oven, baby)
- SBD’s smell so bad because they’re produced by bacterial fermentation, which produces small amounts of noxious gas that doesn’t build enough pressure to create noise upon release (ain’t that some shite? Yes, actually.)
- Women fart just as much as men (and they smell just as bad – butt you knew this)
- Yes, farts are flammable (strike a light homey)
- Fish and turtles both fart (apparently there was some debate)
- It is not possible to get high from inhaling 2 or 3 farts in a row (butt I got a serious buzz huffing a bag of 12 – try it)
- Farts travel out of the anus at 10 feet per second (7 mph)
- You can, in fact, taste a…

Jeez, I could go on all day. But it was that second to last one – farts travel at 10 feet per second, 7 miles per hour – that got me to thinking…how could I use my newfound super-power to help my skating?

Lucky me, I’ve got a physicist in the family. I hit him up on Fartbook:

Still waiting to hear back from the boys at Cern.

So there’s your proof from The Prof – Farts Make You Faster! The meme was right. I don’t need to do the math to know that I can convert a tailwind to a headwind with a right old toot of the heiney horn. Yessiree, my heat-seeker sphincter song will propel me to the top of the podium, where I’ll be smelling like roses, or at least the King of the Heap! I knew this new diet would pay off – yeah boyee! And hey, if my butt-cracked-pot theory doesn’t help boost me ahead, at least it’ll keep people off my tail, ’cause, you know, who’d wanna be there?

Go on, pull my finger, I dare you.

Let ‘er rip.

We hope you will enjoy the show

Happy New Year! Let me introduce to you, the new First Loser, same as the old First Loser, just, you know, new…

Have to admit, it’s gettin better. Can’t get no worse. (Wait. Strike that. Reverse it. It can.)

Don’t call it a comeback, but it’s something like that. Not quite a psychedelic acid trip with tangerine rollerblades and marshmallow quads, but it’ll be a trip worth taking, if you’re into skating. It’s not all about me anymore, or maybe, not as much as it used to be. Some weeks, we’re gonna get by with a little help from my friends – skaters you need to know about, learn from and start following. ‘Cause I’m fixing a hole in the content. I’m unplugging the stoppage that is writer’s block, that’s kept my mind from wandering where it will go, which is to all things skating. That’s right, for the benefit of you, Mr. & Mrs. Inline Speedskater, there will be a show tonight. But it’s not on a trampoline, no, it’s right here, right now…just what you wanted, another Mantia video:

Don’t say I never gave ya nuttin’. Anyways, look for new posts every two weeks in 2013. A mix of the old style, with a lot of new seasoning. What you can expect:

- Skate training

- Cross training

- Skater interviews

- Videos

- Nonsense

- Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘n’ Roll

- Rambling, pondering, expounding, bloviation and cranial flatulence

- Inline speed skating

- etc

It’ really doesn’t matter if I’m wrong, I’m write, or right, going to the left, or just rambling incoherently. There’s nothing to do, it’s up to you. Tell your friends, First Loser is back, and I’ve got nothin’ to say but it’s OK!