News and Schmooze (and blues) #2

An old item. One that never leaves my mind. When I was kid in Menomonee Falls, which is on the northwest corner of Milwaukee, I used to stay up late quite a few nights a week and listen to Ron Kuzner’s jazz show, The Dark Side, on WFMR. The show came on at midnight, and I wasn’t supposed to stay up late, obviously, because I was a kid who had to attend school the next morning. In order to avoid detection, I would curl at the end of my bed, near the clock radio, and listen to Ron Kuzner with very low volume, volume so low I sometimes had to hold the clock radio to my ear to hear it. I loved the jazz he played, sure, but listening to Ron? What a unique radio announcer he was. He had a way of speaking as if his voice were a trombone sliding through the registers, pausing at unexpected places, and he would speak profound truth without ever saying too much. When he did the sports on his show, sometimes he would just say, “Milwaukee defeated Minnesota. Kansas City defeated Detroit. Boston and New York (huge pause) did not play.” Perfect! And he always started his news segment with this: “And now for the news, or the blues, depending on your perspective.” In that spirit, therefore, here is my news for the week.

Steak’s cheap this week at Beck’s Meats on Main Street in Oshkosh. Just FYI. It’s cheap every week, actually, and even though New York strip is bad for the heart and the soul or whatever, I walk the dog over there once or twice a week and see what’s on sale. Nothing like acquiring meat from an old-school butcher shop. This joy, however, is about to come to an end. End of this month, I’m moving from Oshkosh to Appleton – that’s twenty miles north – and either I will need to find a new source of meat or I will have to do the right thing and cut steak out of my diet for cycling season. ßIs that the right thing? I’m looking forward to life in Appleton, though. Should be an adventure because isn’t everything?

On Monday or Tuesday next week, The Massachusetts Review will run a longish piece of mine in their online edition. The piece is called “This Problem of Taste,” and I wrote it as a sort of oddball speech to give on the last day of the Pacific University Brief-Residency (that’s the term, I guess) MFA residency in January. It’s about writing and art and some other high-minded stuff of the sort I usually don’t write about and present to an audience. So I’m nervous and happy to let it loose in the wilds. Obviously, I would like this piece to spread far and wide like a disease of truth over the internet, but who knows? I will post the link here then moment it becomes available, of course. In advance, I thank you for telling people how wonderful and insightful you think my piece is! J

And in two weeks, maybe ten days, I will begin writing a regular blog, once a week, at Bicycling.com. For now, the blog will be called “The Bike in Balance,” but this may change before it goes live. The subject matter will focus on how I want to ride fairly seriously and do some races and such but at the same time I want to find a way live a normal life (not possible for me, really, I know), one where I can do stuff like not obsess about bikes all the time and where I can hang out with noncyclist friends on weekends, and so on. To people who don’t ride bikes, this may not make sense, but to cyclists, the idea of balancing training and doing events and having positive relationships with human beings away from the bike – well, it’s tough to manage. So that’s what I’m going to try – not only to manage riding and living but to write about it, too.

And for at least two more weeks, I’ll be leading early-morning spin classes at the downtown YMCA. That’s 5:30 a.m. We have a great group every morning, and we’d love to see you there. My Thursday night classes – 5:30 p.m. – will run every week till the end of April. I’m leading the 8:00 a.m. Saturday class at the downtown Y this week, too, and the 1 p.m. Sunday class, and it’s snowing like crazy today in Oshkosh, and the temps are about to tank into the zero-Fahrenheit range. So what’s your excuse for not showing up for class again?

Okay then. Keep on writing and riding and being groovy people. I close with a link to some classic Ron Kuzner. The guy was one of a kind. No doubt. Enjoy.

News and Schmooze #1

I wish I could make an arrow instead of the subject of this sentence. The arrow would point to the white space above, how it spreads from the corner toward the blur beyond.

Or whatever.

I fucking hate schmooze. I hate it so much I can’t do it without affecting Advanced Poet’s Disease. I vomit when I think about schmooze. I have attacks of explosive diarrhea when I think about schmooze. Sometimes, this happens all at once. I hate that, too. Nevertheless.

I have few news items today.

First, I’ve been posting the track lists for my indoor cycling classes on Facebook. If you’re in Oshkosh one day when I’m leading a class, stop by the Downtown Oshkosh Y and check it out. Next week, my classes are 5:30 a.m. Monday through Thursday and 5:30 p.m. Thursday evening. Each class runs for a full hour, with a roughly three minute break in the middle. The music selection is always cool, naturally, even though some of my jazz selections have annoyed the participants more than a time or two, and Devo’s “Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy” isn’t the class favorite I’ve always dreamed it would be, but alas, you have to understand I attend EVERY indoor cycling class I teach. I am there with my monolithic ass in the saddle and giving ‘er for all she’s worth every goddam time! And I don’t wanna keep hearing the same music over and over! I’d get bored, which is exactly why we have music in spin class in the first place: to prevent boredom while pedaling nowhere. Because pedaling nowhere, by definition, is a drag. Of course, it’s damn hard to break your collarbone crashing in an indoor cycling class.

Bike Tribes, A Field Guide to North American Cyclists is available for preorder at the usual places, and it will go on sale nationwide on May 22. Soon, soon, soon, I’ll post a picture of the cover and some blurbs and some other amusing/schmoozing stuff thereunto appertaining. The book’s sort of funny – maybe even really funny at some points – and I’m interested to hear what folks have to say once they can read it. About half of the cyclists in the audience will bitch about it. That goes without saying on account of that’s what we cyclists do best. The literary folks in the small crowd will bitch, too, because that’s what the literary crowd does best. I am so fucking happy. Let me tell you. J

And I’m tentatively expected to make an announcement about a remote possibility that, if all things in the universe align and everybody for once is happy, I will be blogging sort of regularly at actual website maintained by a print publication. Obviously, I will link to it here when it goes live.

Finally, the drink pictured above is Diet Sierra Mist on the rocks with a splash of Diet Blueberry/Pomegranate juice and a wedge of lime. Yuck.

Have a nice weekend!