James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

pooriggy

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Every so often someone wants to know how I came to be called Iggy. The story then goes, well Iggy is short for ignitor, I have the ability to set people off like a rocket. The next time someone asks about my name I'll have to bring up that time I axed Norm on his blog why he rides a bike.

About 25 yrs ago, before bikes and the internets, I used to wake up on Sunday morning and read the paper. When I say read the paper, I mean look at comics, see what's on sale and check out that pull out magazine called Parade. Every other week it had an article about some movie star that abused drugs and alcohol, slept with everyone and went through at least 3 marriages before being grounded, content and finding happiness in there 50s. I remember reading this stuff thinking, wtf, you messed up your life but now you're a know it all??? I have basically turned into that person. I didn't screw up my life Hollywood style (mo money mo problems) but you do learn things as you go along. Hopefully I keep learning.

I realize I sound like a preacher at times, it's something I inherited from my father and my father's father. I've never met my grandfather, he died before I was born but the stories I hear lead me to believe he was a preacher.

There are somethings not meant for the internet, calling someone out on a public forum is never going to go well, no one ever responds with, gee, I never thought of it that way, thanks for enlightening me. I apologized to Norm privately and I'll say here publicly I'm sorry for what I said in my post.

I'm not going to defend my pov and there is no need to defend yours, (anyone reading this). I honestly don't care if you zwift or not, I'm not into Strava, I don't care about cycling data(except during training/racing season), I don't even use a Garmin when I mtb, I have Utah. I'm still gonna bust your ballz when you zwift 10hrs a week, just like you'd bust mine for being one of 4 people in NJ that would go to an alpine mtn to xc ski. You do you and I'll do me, see you on the next ride.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
The Short & Long of It

@jShort - again I think this is an academic conversation since I think we agree that you don't have the time. But if you are going to do a big hours approach you can't just do it sporadically. What I mean by this is that I think you need to make it your lifestyle then see where it nets you. So for 4-6 months you need to just pound out the hours and see where you go from there. It may very well be the case that it doesn't work for you. I don't think it works for everything. I don't think everything works for everyone with a few exceptions. I'll list 2:

1. Smoking will not make you faster on the bike
2. Pulling the pins on hand grenades is neither a good long, nor short-term approach to much of anything

As for Zwift, to answer your questions - I can watch Netflix when I'm just piling time on. When I do a race or hard workout, it's gotta be music. I have also come to the conclusion that I love watching TV but hate the sloth that is typically associated with it. This setup solves that problem. Get fit while watching TV? This is a win for me. I always feel a little restless when we blow off a bucket of hours watching TV even though I do really enjoy a lot of the shows out there. I admit that I was not able to just watch TV and use the trainer before but I do wonder if the smart trainer is actually a considerable amount of why I like this better. Maybe it has nothing to do with Zwift.

Last bit - I watched half of season 2 of Patriot on the flight home tonight and saw the penis measuring scene. Goddamn this show can be brilliant at times. I also sent you another message on Hangouts (because this works on the plane) about the song over the scene in s2e3. Goddamn good stuff.

Olympic Swimming

One of the requirements of Julia being on the BAC team is that we need to volunteer a certain amount of hours every few months. I took care of this period last Friday by volunteering in both the morning and the evening. The morning was qualifying for the evening finals for the older kids, basically the high school kids. One of the first jobs they will give you is the timer position. It's a necessary element but in reality you are the 3rd line of timing. The pad is the first. The plunger is the second (which you operate so in a sense you are 2/3 of the timing). The stopwatch is the 3rd. For every swimmer in every event, they want 2 of the 3 to be recorded. Since this was the older kids, this is even more important as some of these kids are going to be trying to qualify for the Olympic trials.

And this is why this block is here at all. Over the course of the whole day only 1 kid qualified, and she was in our lane in the evening. I have to say it's pretty damn cool to be thrown into something so meaningful on the first day of volunteering. It's pretty awesome to see that first hand. I also have to say these kids are really a bunch of good kids. I grew up playing a lot of ball sports, which most of you know are responsible for 43% of all adult assholes later in life. It seems as if the culture in swimming is far more encouraging, far more accepting. It was nice to see and I hope Julia finds some place here.

5010

@stb222 - hold that thought. I may do a write-up for the team blog. I'm getting a few details from the woman who rented me the bike. I will say that this is far better than the RIP and if I had my way I would replace the RIP with this in a heartbeat. But as I am not made of money, I'll have to deal with what I have for now.

The Team Blog?

Yeah, coming soon to a theater near you. Stay tuned or something.

South Mountain

I ended up riding South Mountain twice while I was out there, once Sunday with D and then again yesterday by myself. I was not as excited to go it alone but she had to be back and I wasn't going to waste another day at this shitty workshop. So I rented a second day to hit up these trails:
https://www.trailforks.com/region/south-mountain/

Sunday loop here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/2092937593/overview

Wednesday here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/2098910129/overview

I'm not going to say these trails are the greatest thing ever but they are pretty good. I love the terrain out here which isn't really saying much because it's hard not to love it, especially when everything here is dry and clean and the skies are blue and in New Jersey everything is like baby vomit in the sky. This was really a great 2 days and I felt great out there. The final 30 minutes yesterday were nothing short of amazing.

I really do love doing stuff like this but where we live this is pretty few & far between. We've been graced with just miserable weather and...surprise! I just landed in New Jersey to more shitty weather. Splendid.

Having said that I may end up with more time to ride in regards to work sooner than later. Mysterious sentence left hanging, just like that.

Tour de Zwift

I was hoping to do all 9 stages of this but in the end I'll probably only make 7/9 then need to do the 2 make-up days on the Friday before we go to ski Gore. I don't think riding 4 hours the day before a big ski day makes any sense. So I'll probably have to skip this one. It was a thing to do, that wasn't done.

Sterling

@pooriggy wants me to lead a tour of Sterling for the MTBNJ Group Ride Series. We're thinking I may be able to squeeze out on 2/23 but I'm not sure yet. We've got to figure out if D can wrangle the posse solo that morning because we have so many different things going on all-at-once.

Travel Blog

I created a new travel blog for all the various trips we go on around the country. This essentially means that content will be removed from here and posted elsewhere. I feel like this is a good separation of travel-specific stuff that is geared for us/meant to be a more permanent log of what we did. It also allows this to be more of a miscellaneous junk pile which is sadly what it becomes half the time. But this can also then be more focuses on biking and/or training and/or bike-related hijinks. It feels more in line with the way it "should" be, if that makes any sense. I'm not ready to share that one yet as it is not baked enough to my liking.

Also I will keep all the media posts here which I am sure you all look forward too. Well Jeremy does. At least in regards to Patriot.

On Travel

I left the hotel at 6:30 this morning and got home at 9:19. Newark can be a real pig to fly in & out of. But at least I'm home, which is the good thing. I should be here for the next 14 nights before the next adventure begins.

I currently have no work trips on the immediate radar. But I will likely go to Chicago in February.
 

Santapez

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
-Between you and Iggy discussing it I decided to watch The Patriot. I couldn't understand what you guys would find interesting about that show if you see the description of what the show is. It's 100% one of the best shows I've seen lately. I'm amazed at how well they can do a show with gags/scenes that they lay out exactly what's going to happen and yet they do a marvelous job. Perfect example is the rock/paper/scissor's scene, you know what's going to happen yet I'm laughing at it because it's so well done. Lakeman's acting is great.

-Once smart trainers get even a little cheaper I think we'll see more people on them. It's a completely different experience.
 

thegock

Well-Known Member
Who is ur favorite character?

D/k how to set up poll.

I got ? bath who is quite more sinister than first appears
 

pooriggy

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Who is ur favorite character?
I don't think you can axe a question like this for a show like this. I like the show for the scenes that come together in a really unique way. I like Ichabod and Lakeman hugging in the woods and that nonsense piping jargon that they throw around.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
track and field is similar to the swim experience you described - there are a bunch of kids that want to do their best,
more than likely they are going to finish their event, even if DFL, it isn't like the ball was hit to them, and they lost the game,
and have to deal with that. then there are a few stand-out kids, and the mid-packers want to see them set a meet
record, or county, etc. So they are usually creating some positive energy.

this is the best part about officiating these events.

it is also very personal, they are in the lockers together, they are in-line before their attempt, it is the same kids every year.
so they know each other, shake hands, hi-5. except the pole-vaulters ;) they play mind games, like passing on height
that could win, to see what the other person will do.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
Yes know, the other thing I just thought about is the parents. There is no yelling at the officials, or coaching from the stands. Kinda nice.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
The Week in Biking

This week has been a tough one to try to keep the wheels going. Between Arizona, a whole day in transit, then a jam-packed weekend (until today), I'm feeling pretty run-down at the end of it. It's a good thing today was a pretty low-key day, because I needed it. The highlights from the bike:

* 10 total hours on the week, exactly
* Wednesday was South Mountain, 2:20-ish rolling time. Loved being out in the warm weather
* Friday I did my long ride of the week, 3.5 hours, on the trainer while watching Patriot season 2, episodes 5-8
* Saturday just whatever I could fit in while watching that Ted Bundy thing
* Sunday (today) I did 2.5 hours to hit the 10 for the week, finished Ted. The classic Jane's sound bite was in there today

Trying to keep myself in double digits with the hours and that was the real stretch this week. Probably going to have the same issue next week. I'll get to that next section. In all I feel reasonably good though as mentioned, a little tired today.

Next Week in Biking

Thinking I need to take it easy on Monday to refresh a little. I probably need to try to get 4 hours in on Tuesday to keep this plan going. But I'm not 100% sure I have this in me. I was actually kicking around the idea of going to Wharton for double but let's be real, that's an entire day. I don't think I can swing that. I may just figure out 2 movies to watch while I crank it out after my last meeting Tuesday. Unfortunately the day is not especially well aligned for this. Monday is far more open but I cannot do 4 hours tomorrow after 7.5 in the last 3 days.

The rest of the week would be me filling out time to hit 10 hours by Friday. Then we go to Gore for the weekend.

Team Holiday Party

We had it last night. In all I think we had almost 60 people here. First pic is everyone (minus most of the kids who are downstairs)

all.JPG

Then just the team. 30 of 37 active members made it. Hey check it out, we have 9 women on the team.

team.JPG

My Travel Blog

I think it's now baked enough to share:
https://mtbnj.wordpress.com/

The Arizona page here:
https://mtbnj.wordpress.com/arizona/

Yes, it's currently branded MTBNJ because I gobbled that up when we discussed doing a team blog. Then Jimmy said he wanted to host it on our server. So I kept the domain and made it our travel blog for the coming year. I still have 2 things to write up, Brooklyn & Minnesota. I'll try to do that in the next few weeks. I haven't decided if I'll keep that domain or not. I was going to do travelingnormany.wordpress.com but that's too long. Then I was going to do travlingnormandyin2019becausethisurlispreposterouslylongsoIwilladdsomerandomcharacterslike8yuiefhggskldjhvklsjdhvksld.wordpress.com.

And thus, it remains MTBNJ for now. I may or may not change it.

After the last 2 weeks I debated not sharing this at all, but then I ask myself, who am I kidding? I like to write and I like people to read it. You can subscribe to the RSS feed or through WordPress or wait for me to post the links here or just plain-old ignore it. Feel free to take it or leave it.

Team Blog

Not to be confused with the above. That should come out this week as well. We'll explain more when that comes out but I will not "run" that. I will contribute to it, but I'm not going to be the owner of the content. I have 2 items I plan to write-up this week: the 5010 review and a recap of South Mountain. Oh and maybe a small announcement about Short Track.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I have been watching & reading a lot of things recently so I think before this gets too long, I need to do this post. All the media since last time:

Shutter Island - Response to @stb222 about this. I think it's safe to say that yeah, I did figure it out pretty early on, which is funny because I typically do not try to figure stuff out while I watch. I like to let the book/movie/show come to me. I suppose that was part of it.

The Keeper of Lost Things (book). It was ok, I wouldn't run out and buy it but if it's laying around, not bad. It did give me the idea of doing some short stories in the form of just writing about random things you find on the ground. I mean, this idea is directly from the book and the first thing I picked up was 2 shotgun shells while hiking with @jmanic on New Year's Day. I have not gotten around to writing that story though. Still working on all the other forms of media I guess.

Children of Men. Netflix movie. Dystopian (I dislike this word) future where nobody can get pregnant anymore. By far the best part of this movie is Michael Caine who wasn't in it enough. The guy is excellent. Anyway, movie is decent and if it were on I would suggest watching it.

Murderbot 4. Book, Kindle. This is a great easy read and I'm bummed the series is over. I'll check out more by Martha Wells to be sure. This series is about a sentient robot with a sense of humor. Shit is not brilliant but it comes pretty close at times. Excellent read.

Ex Machina. Netflix movie. I got this recommendation by the same source that gave me Children of Men. This was by far the better of the 2. I really enjoyed this movie and I really enjoy this concept of sentient/thinking robots. Watch it.

Altered Carbon (redux). Series, Netflix. Ok I realize now that I had not finished watching the last time I wrote this which is why I was not able to remember it. In fact, I had only watched 3 of them. So I finished out the series and I really like it. Put this on the watchlist, I'd say. Also love the sleeve idea as it allows you to swap out characters from season to season, which is actually a real issue in this day & age I think. See my comment on Patriot below regarding this.

A Series of Unfortunate Events. Series, Netflix. This was good. The kids love it and we like it. The first 2-3 episodes are excellent, sometimes the humor is absolutely sensational. I think as they wrapped up the series things were a little incoherent and rocky. I am not sure I ever watched the full season 2 so I may need to go do that. This is a good family watch in something like 2 nights. Our kids devoured it. NPH is absurdly great.

Won’t you be my neighbor? Movie, United. I grew up with Mr. Rogers but not really watching it much, so this did not really bring back too many memories for me. It was ok, not the best. I think you needed to be a fan of the show growing up, which I wasn't really. I know some people really loved it but it never really pulled through for me.

Borg vs. McEnroe. Movie, United (Hulu also). Unlike Mr. Rogers I did grow up watching Borg & McEnroe playing tennis. This movie is good if you were into this at the time at any level. The story is good, and it's real. So that's a bonus. This is the second tennis movie I have watched recently, the other being Battle of the Sexes. I liked that one better but this one is equally worth watching. I wish I still liked tennis.

Siddhartha. Book. This is one of those "you really should read this book" books. Well, I think most of those books are for twenty-somethings. This was ok. I read the entirety of it while on the Arizona trip. I think there are time periods for people to read things. I think my time window has passed.

Patriot season 2. Series, Prime. Absolutely love this. Watch it, now, then watch again. I am tempted to watch again which I never do anymore. The thing that sucks about this is that the lead actor has signed on to do some Apple TV bullshit so if there is a season 3, it's going to need to wait forever. Gone are the days where networks lock people up for years and crank out the shows. Now, if someone is good, they get gobbled up and used in another show. This is great in one sense, because good TV is being made weekly. On the other hand, when you get something that is pure gold like this, and it potentially gets snatched away, it leaves you feeling empty. For sure this season ends open-ended. Without question there can be a 3rd season in the storyline.

Ted Bundy documentary. Series, Netflix. I am disturbed by how much people loved this guy. People flocked to the courtroom to adore him. Christ, even the judge who sentenced him to death wanted to like him, he said as much that he did. It is staggering how much people will accept from a smooth talking, good looking guy. It is downright creepy how much he comes off as a politician in this. Having said all that, I think this series is overrated and I didn't really think it was that great. The last 30 minutes was the best of it, for me.

Thor Ragnorak. Movie, Netflix. It's hard not to like Thor. In this one, the dialogue is really good. Some of the scenes with him & Hulk are just 100% on-point. The dialogue leaves you literally LOL'ing at times. Love the use of The Immigrant Song at the start/end of the movie. I also really enjoy Loki, as this guy just can't help himself and adds a constant stream of entertainment. I think I want to watch Infinity War again.

Perfect Bid. Movie, Hulu. Awesome, but you need to have watched a lot of Price is Right growing up, which I did. Story is great and the movie is pretty short. Worth the 1:15 if you were a Price fan. You really come to love Bob Barker and that whole crew. And my gosh, Drey Carrey comes off as a total asshole late in the movie. Where Barker legitimately wanted people to win, Carey pretty much hates the guy who won big. The original Price was an easy game to enjoy and I think this is due in part to the genuinely good people that were part of the show. These days, you just wouldn't get a cast of people who actually root for the contestants to win.

Between flying and the long rides, I've had lots of time to take in media in the past month. Obviously, I guess.
 

pooriggy

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Patriot season 2. Series, Prime. Absolutely love this. Watch it, now, then watch again. I am tempted to watch again which I never do anymore.
Yeah, I really liked this series too. This is my take on it.

What the director does really well with this series is build a low key, mundane story that leads to a hard hitting scene, which leaves the viewer saying holy shit to himself. This is evident in the first 10 minutes of the show. Without giving anything away, it starts out with a typical office interview but what happens several minutes later at a busy intersection is outlandishly funny, or you don't find it funny and the series is not for you.

Patriot is a spoof on the James Bond, Jason Bourne, Mission Impossible type movies in a sense, in that the lead character can do anything on land, sea or air however without the bravado and super hero fantasy. Don't get me wrong, Patriot does dabble in fantasy but with the goal of providing humor as opposed to action drama.

The characters are portrayed with human characteristics and at times highly flawed, which is such a contrast to most action drama stories. The main character is good looking but walks around sad throughout every episode. There is a mission, whether it's accomplished or not becomes irrelevant as the characters reveal more of themselves and this is what is fulfilling to the viewer.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
For romantic comedy - try Lovesick (previously named Scrotal Recall)
True Detectives
just rebooted (3ish episodes into the new season?) - looks promising.

Going to give a few from your list a shot.
-
on Ted Bundy - https://hypebeast.com/2019/1/netflix-ted-bundy-serial-killer-reminder
There was a scene in NBK which depicts Mickey and Mallory as some sort of heroes/leaders/idols.
Art reflects life?
--
one of the more interesting observations about popular entertainment today is the juxtaposition of machines becoming sentient vs
humans becoming non-thinking zombies..... perhaps a sign of the growing dependence on tech?

speaking of which TWD returns 2/10, cause who doesn't like zombie a based soap opera!?
 
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