C’mon Man!

Happy New Year!  What’s with the Paul Ryan campaign poster?  I don’t know squat about his politics but I do know he is a republican;  he is from and lives in my small hometown in Janesville, Wisconsin;  he went to the same high school as I did (I graduated with his older brother); and he worked for Oscar Mayer in college driving the Weinermobile.  He gets my vote just because of all that.  We could be screwed but at least it would provide me some interesting bragging rights and blog fodder.

The end of the year always brings with it everyone’s best and worst lists.  So I figured this month I would take the opportunity to reflect on 2011 and predict a few things about 2012.

My favorite segment on the NFL pre-game shows is “C’mon Man!”.  It highlights bone headed plays from the previous week.  So let me start with a look back at 2011 and the C’mon Man!’s of the Year:

Occupy Shmockupy.  C’mon Man!  First, let me just say that if you want to get a job in America you can.  I could guarantee any of these Occupy’ers that I could help find them a job within a month if they were to ask me.  It may not pay much but it would be a job and a start.  I don’t know anyone in my immediate peer group that even knows what the heck they are protesting.  All I know is they have a lot of time on their hands and should quit sitting on them and start using them to flip some burgers.

Time Magazine’s “Protester” as Person of the Year?!  C’mon man!  While I’m moaning about the Occupy losers let me just say that Time lumped them into this prestigious award.  Stupid is as stupid does.

Boston Red Sox Epic Collapse.  C’mon Man!  They were up nine games in the early part of September and blew it.  “We’ll go down in history as one of the worst collapses in history, so it definitely doesn’t feel good to be part of that.” said their left fielder.  You think?

Celebrity Divorces.  C’mon Man!  Kim blames it on the nude male yoga incident (there was a nude male yoga incident?  I’m sure my daughter will fill me in.)  All I know is the Kardashians were married for 72 days.  That is like 2 1/2 months.  I’ve had my fancy running shoes for longer than that.  Condiments last longer than that.  I trained for the marathon for longer than that.  I say we all join the 280,000 that have already signed the petition. (www.boycottkim.com)  Add to this “in” thing to do this past year and you’ll have Demi and Ashton (at least they made it 6 years) and Russell and Katy (14 months).  Sigh.

Planking.  C’mon Man!  Ok, I guess this is the 46-year-old in me coming out.  To be honest I’d probably plank myself if I could.  My son can plank and has pictures to prove it.  I may just be jealous.  Maybe I’ll do a planking blog post one month and just post pictures to get this out of my system.

Do you have a CVS card?  C’mon Man!  No I don’t.  So quit asking me (especially since you then just swipe some card behind the counter anyway).

As for the “Best Of” for 2011 here are my favorites (sorry – most are sports related. I’m a guy.)

World Series Game 6.  David Freese who happens to be from the St. Louis area not only hits a shot off the left field wall in the 9th inning to tie the game but he then hits a homer in the bottom of the 11th with 2 outs to win it for the Cardinals.  That has to go down as the best baseball game and individual performance ever.  He even made the Ellen show.  (My wife watches it.)

Superbowl XLV Green Bay 31-25 over Pittsburgh.  I’ve said enough on the Packers so I won’t belabor it but had to include it.  You can’t blame me.

Savannah Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon.  This is a running blog after all.  If you read my previous blog (www.rfbr262.com) you’ll know why this makes the list.  I also rented (and now bought for Slider) a movie called “Spirit of the Marathon”.  I realize I must have officially gone off the deep end.  I’m even forcing my wife to watch it.  But it really was a Best Of moment in 2011 to finish this goal and hopefully can be repeated again on down the road.  Side note – my wife actually made a book out of this blog.  It is awesome and way more creative than the blog itself.  It goes down as the best Christmas gift of 2011 (and probably ever).  Come on over anytime and I’ll show you.

“Poop Dolla!!!”  I could have just put this under the Savannah Marathon item as it occurred that weekend.  Slider, me, his sister and mother were walking along a sidewalk with a group of Haunted Pub Crawl people in Savannah’s historic district.  Some guy in our pub crawl group from Wake Forest (preppy, runner dude) who is walking just ahead of us happens to reach down and pick up a dollar.  He kind of looks at it as Slider says “hey, its your lucky day”.  Then he proceeds to whip it into the bush to the right of us.  We all kind of looked at him strangely but then the next thing you hear and see is some guy without a shirt yelling at the top of his lungs out of a 2nd floor window to our left “Poop Dolla!!!”.  I bet he had waited for hours for someone to finally pick up that poop infested dollar to yell that.  It was by far one of the funniest moments or things we’ve ever seen.  Poor preppy Wake Forest guy was very embarrassed and insisted he didn’t get any on him but we just couldn’t help but laugh.  You would have too.

Leaving Iraq.  I loved the pictures of the soldiers exiting Iraq.  I can’t even imagine having to spend a full year or more in the desert and dust of Iraq with land mines and lunatic snipers and such.  Good luck to the people there but come on home boys.

Family.  I continue to be blessed with a great family, good health and awesome friends.  These all make my personal list of Best Of’s for 2011.

So what are my 2012 predictions?  Kim K. will fade away.  Charlie Sheen will come back (he says he’s even famous on Mars).  A Jeremy Graham song will make country’s Top 30 (Harlem, GA native; now on iTunes; future CMA Awards winner).  Packers will three-peat.

Running Update:  Ok, “running” on the evil elliptical running machine is over.  I’m now back on track.  Literally.  You don’t know how much you like something until you can’t do it anymore.  I really do like running and missed it!  That is something I’d have never typed about a year ago.  I’m going to make my wife watch the Spirit movie over and over this coming year until she types this as well.

I have about a month of freelance running and then I’m officially training for something again.  Five of my neighborhood buddies and I are going to do the Nashville Rock ‘N’ Roll Half Marathon in April.  I’m still following good ol’ Hal’s advice and it includes what they call Speedwork.  That is like an oxymoron when you put it anywhere near my name.  Hal says if you want to run fast you have to run fast (at least a couple of times a week).  I’m like a Hal zombie now.  Ok Hal, whatever you say Hal.

Speaking of going fast, some things never change.  For Christmas, I bought myself a pair of Mizuno Wave Rider 15 running shoes.  You know how you used to feel with the new Converse shoes on your feet and how you couldn’t be caught with these new “fast shoes” on?  Well I have fast shoes on again now.  I can feel it!  Buzz kill for my new shoes and one word of caution for my Johns Creek neighbors – if you think the new sidewalk continues on along 141, think again.  You’ll be caught along the road having to choose between life and death or jumping away from the cars into ankle-deep mud.  I chose mud.

Other than the mud incident, the only funny thing running wise this past month was the monkey that sat on top of the dog running at halftime during a Broncos game.  My simple-minded humor found that very, very entertaining.  I’ve posted a link to that clip below assuming you have the same sense of humor.

Only 39 months and 26.2 miles to go…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/19/monkey-riding-dog-broncos-patriots-video_n_1158098.html