My Gym - Last Crack

It’s “my gym” because I’ve worked here for two and a half years and I’m still the only one who knows the difference between his ass and the hole in the middle of a 45 pound plate. And as cliché as it may be, It’s also been my little home away from home. Well, I guess it’s more of a smellier, dramatic version of a home away from home, but it’s been fun enough for me to hang around this long anyway.

Every day in my gym it’s the same thing. This place has a timeless quality, so I’m convinced if I move half way around the world for a decade and come home I’d walk through the same glass doors and hear the same thumping of feet and whirring of treadmill motors. The same air conditioner dumping piles of cool air onto the gym floor, the same bar bells clanking into their cradles and the same smell of rubber flooring hanging over the weight pit. I’ve spent hundreds of hours in this gym. Walking the floor during workouts, battling dust with the commercial vacuum cleaner, reclining in the leather office chair. The features of this place are seared onto my conscious.

Contemporary design elements are designed into the gyms décor to create a non-threatening environment. This fabrication attracts what the sales guys refer to as the “de-conditioned market”. Compiled into that tidy label are the house moms who’ve gained a little extra padding hustling junior to soccer practice, living on a diet delivered through a drive-through window. Ex-military men whose beer guts march onward, as their days of mandatory marching come to an end. And, every other average Joe or Josephine with diabetes, heel spurs, arthritis and fifty extra pounds whose fitness resolutions begin around December 31st and abruptly end around January 5th.

Neutral colored green and purple pastels cover the walls and ergonomic, friendly looking machines wrapped in powder coated silver stand in rows designed to direct human traffic through their routines. My gym is devoid of meat heads. No slamming around weights, obscene music or frat house conversation here. The dumbbells are all covered in rubber for safety. Big red buttons on the wall and white lanyards with little green buttons are strategically placed to alert 911. This gym’s members are cordial and clean up after themselves while bubble gum top forty hits crank out over the radio.

Leaning back against the reclining springs of the leather office chair I pick up the days papers and begin to read as I open a bottle of water. Sipping off of the top I lean back again and again. Rocking, relaxing and thinking on how to tackle the day.

One of our members, “Big John”, leans his head into my office, “Hey theer ol’ buddy. How’s the weather treating you mate? We got dumped on pretty good uh?” John’s a great big ol’ Aussie and carries his accent like a fifty pound trunk at the airport he’s afraid to set down. John has wild red, sun bleached hair all the time, like he’s just returned from spending years on safari in the Great Victoria Desert. He’s as stout as a compact car so my stereotyping drums up images of playing rugby with a bunch of other Brits, chugging one liter cans of Fosters and shooting wallabies pinned in the headlights of Land Rovers. “Not too terrible I reply, how’s your car holding up in this awful stuff?” Since I’ve worked here John has helped to raise my game in small talk, somewhat of a lost art in this day of twitter and skype. “Not too bad theer ol’ boy, just had to dig myself out of een eegloo this mornin’,” John chuckled as he replied.

I remember one time I told John I hadn’t been accepted for my big second round interview with Deloitte. He could tell I was going through a tough one. His advice was, “Those bloody human resources bastards are idiots. Worthless as teets on a bull thee are, you need to knock down their door or they’ll have their way with you ol’ boy.” Eloquently put. The following day I made a dozen calls and sent out emails to Deloitte and two weeks later I had my interview. Crikey good show.

John’s “Fosters Keg”, is what he refers to as his mid section, it hasn’t shrunk an inch since he joined the gym. I sometimes wonder to myself why you would join a gym not to change. My co-worker Brandon told me for some people, socializing and working out can be the highlight of their day. I was shocked at first but it’s true. As time goes on, I began to know these people and I do what I can to make their experience fun. But that doesn’t stop me from asking god to eventually let the highlight of my days be soaking up sun on a private beach in South America, not sweating on some cold piece of steel in the middle of a strip mall.

“Hey, hey, man, how ya doin?” It’s “tall Tom”. He caws as he struts in the entrance, ducking to miss the commercial sized door jam. Literally, the guys like 7 feet even, when he runs on the treadmill he has to constantly crouch down and hit the keypad to change speeds, which makes him look like one of those pecking bird desk ornaments, eternally caught between cawing and pecking. Tall Tom sells his insurance, and I guess he’s pretty good at it too because I became his client after only a year of meeting him. When my family gets rich after I kick the bucket I guess they have tall Tom to thank.

Jay’s the big man on campus around the gym, every time he walks though the doors he’s strutting like a rooster, making certain not to make eye contact with anyone while throwing sideways glances at the ladies. Jay’s a real estate developer with one hundred plus properties, some of which are in Barbados, so George, a struggling mortgage broker, is always right on Jay’s heels. They’re always batting it back and forth, reliving some old high school sports glories, arguing over ESPN highlights or whispering about some “young honey” that just joined up. My Gym is often the equivalent of one big office water cooler, working here has gotten me some sharp skills shooting the shit. Next comes Alex the bank manager, then Jacob the loan officer then Julie the real estate broker and then a half dozen more like them that’ve offered me positions once I graduate. Note to self: re-open a gym after you’ve made it just for the networking.

The usual flock of house wives rolls in. Most of them are well reserved, except for Jessica, a Brazilian lady who’s much more flirtatious than the rest. She floats from one man to the other in the gym like a butterfly choosing flowers. Most of the men humor her at first, but soon the novelty of it wears thin. Desperate housewives, one of most interesting elements in my gym. Note to self: Be wary of any potential girlfriends who like to spend too much time in the gym. Jessica pops her head into the office, “We all want to know if Bobby and Phil are offering free classes and where we can sign up. Aren’t you here late Mr. Brandt, were you waiting for me?” I laugh sarcastically, “Yeah I’m here just for you.” We small talk about working out and I listen to her same old story. She is eating bad again and put on weight. In two weeks she is going to a wedding or a reunion or a dinner with the in-laws, to be honest I don’t even keep track anymore. She needs to “look pretty quick.” I’m a gym rat, not a miracle worker, after these two years I could pass for a shrink.

I used to think we only collected membership fees at my gym, but we collect more. We collect dashed and new romances, born again track stars, quitters of vice and winners of competitions. We collect new mothers, the silently determined, the outwardly apathetic and the willingly malleable. We also collect ones like me. I’ve never been great at saying what my strengths and weaknesses are, so I’ll just tell you how I got here.


“Can you bring me some more ketchup please? Sir! Sir!”

“Sure thing Sir,” I whistle from between clenched teeth and a forced smile. I’m picturing top sizing the plastic ramekin of ketchup upside down on his head so it looks like one of those little hats on the tambourine playing monkey in that Stephen King movie. It’s near the end of my double shift. I’m starting to go snow blind from novelty stained glass lamps and bar lights reflecting off of shellacked wooden dining tables. Little kids run free from their parents around my feet. They’re flailing forks and knifes like mini-swashbucklers as I try to balance thirty pound trays of double-decker cheese fries and clam chowder. By the end of the night I’m picturing booting these little kids like field goals up into the novelty fish netting hanging from the ceiling.

Two weeks into my waiting career I set down my little lined pad near the order terminal and walk back into the kitchen during another night of poor tips and times. The manager’s looking at me with a serious expression, “Brandt can I talk to you for a minute?” I oblige and we retire to a spot by the dishwashing station out of the way from the constant stampede of busboys and waitresses, arms and tubs full of greasy, plain white dishes. “Brandt, there’s an African American couple who complained that you’re not serving them as well as their neighboring table with white guests. Now I’m not trying to imply anything but what’s going on here?” Anger and humor boiled from my depths.

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” I retort letting out a chuckle of disbelief. “Those two are sitting next to each other in the booth and every time I walk up I’ve got to watch him with his hand up her skirt! You want me kneel down next to the table and take their order? I don’t care what race they are man but I’m not comfortable watching a skin flick while I’m trying to work!”

He looked shocked, “Alright Brandt, I believe you. I just wanted to make sure, you know what kind of area this is.”

“What kind of area this is?” I thought. “And I’m the racist?”

I made my way to the bar, leaning on the far side for a time out, to reflect on my situation. “I’m getting older,” I thought to myself, “maybe knowing when to fold and quitting aren’t the same thing.” I thought about the guys in the history books, the great business men. No one who always plays it safe every time makes it anywhere in this world, they suffer slowly with tied hands, drowning in monotony.

I walked back into the manager’s office and grabbed Steve, the owner. He was a younger, pretty hip guy who I got along with all right. I told him I put in my two weeks. Without batting an eye he thanked me for helping out while I could. The turnover in these places must be ridiculous, I didn’t wonder why.

Back out by the bar I noticed Erik the busboy spinning his bus tub in the air. Erik already had one foot in the slammer and he was only 17. “Man, so what if I have to sell a little weed here and there to get by?” Says Erik to his buddies as I enter the scene. “So Brandt, why are you quitting anyway?”

“Have I ever told you how they catch monkeys in the Congo?” I asked him.

“Nah man, you’re crazy, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Basically the moral of the story is you can never be afraid to let go of the peanuts.”


Two weeks later I worked my final double shift, turned over my multi colored shirts and flair and relaxed for a few minutes inside the car before I drove home. I opened up all the windows, reclined the seat back, enjoyed the summer night’s breeze and let Zeppelin pour through the radio. On my way home I decided to stop by the gym, a good session of cardio would help me get to sleep. The night air was too good to pass up so I settled on doing a few laps around the shopping mall before heading inside to work out but making my final turn into the gym parking lot I noticed a small, beat up Isuzu Rodeo slow down as it pulled away. The driver was checking me out in the rear view mirror.

“What the hell,” I thought, “Some weirdo other than me out here this late?”
I realized it was John, the owner. He’d signed up my membership, so I trotted up to his car.

“What’s up boyyyyyy. How you been?” John’s pushing 50 years old but he speaks like someone half his junior. He’s got spiked hair, is in excellent shape for even a 30 year old and has a casual way with people that most seem to enjoy. I told him about how I was looking for a job and how I’d worked at Gold’s Gym for a while before. John told he was just letting someone go from his staff and needed someone else to take over her duties. We agreed to meet the next week and discuss the position. I was excited, and at that moment I needed the job, bad.

My gym’s taught me a lot about people, and it’s taught me some too. I learned you can’t rely on the wind or the seasons to determine your fate, you have to create it, and sometimes letting go is just the beginning. Similar to the old cliché, a ship’s rudder can only work when it’s sailing, at the harbor a rudder only flaps aimlessly. Maybe they were right for coining that cliché, hopefully things will turn out alright for me living it.

Feature Final - Pass the Low Fat, Reduced Sodium, Lower Sugar Tostitos Please

You’re a government health regulator seated at a poker table surrounded by the CEOs of the largest American food companies. Scanning the table’s perimeter, you’re looking for weakness. Nabisco has his shades on so his eyes can tell no tales. Kraft and General Mills only return your gaze with the same blank stare. But wait. Out of the corner of your eye you see Pepsi’s palms are moist as he goes to call. Player after player folds and now the hand is back to you. You bluff with false confidence and raise, though weakly. Pepsi takes the bait, calls, and goes all in. The dealer calls for your hands. Your three tens lie on the velvet in triumph over Pepsi’s pair of aces. Taking your coat and standing up from the beaten table you break your gamblers resolve, when for a split second, you crack a smirk through your stone face. As you stride towards the cashier’s box with chips in tow, Pepsi realizes he’s seen the same smirk every weekend for the past twenty years, every time you’ve beaten Marlboro.

Even though the preceding situation sounds like something out of a Vegas flick, it is not un-similar to the disjointed tango between the government and Pepsi. Big tobacco’s peg has been knocked so low that they are now playing in the dirt. Pepsi and other food producers of questionable health benefit seem to have become next on the government’s chopping block.

Pepsi has become nervous enough to start making claims. They will remove every vending machine that serves high sugar drinks from k-12 schools before 2012. They will reduce the salt, sugar and fat content by 25% from their brands before 2020. They will begin to offer healthier options and they will stop targeting younger consumers in their advertising. Pepsi knows the popular modern trend is towards healthy nutritional choices and they are quietly distancing themselves from their rationalizing and deflecting public relations policies of the 90s. Bygone days when Pepsi’s marketing campaigns referred to their snacks as "fun for you."

Is Pepsi in an evangelical crusade against the added trans fats and sugars in their products? Nope. Pepsi is in the government’s and the angry public’s sights as America’s new poor health scapegoat, and Pepsi wants to become the next health campaign whipping boy like the Marlboro man wants to spend his afternoon accessorizing at Louis Vuitton.

The issue here is that Pepsi’s stuck between looming government and social pressures to provide healthier options and the reality that in many cases their best customers do not want those options. “Fatty Boom-Boom” is a term you might’ve heard thrown around a locker room or two to reference people who consume a 24 pack of Pepsi a week and require a forklift to use the restroom. Pepsi has a slightly more affectionate yet equally creepy term for the boom-booms who also happen to be their best customers: “frequent users”.

So what happens when you alienate the “frequent users” to aim campaigns into the hipper, more educated, organic soy milk sipping, free-trade denim wearing hipsters? You get flops like "Tropicana Juice". A financial disaster compared to the launch of "New Coke" which fell on deaf ears and uninterested palates during the mid eighties. Other Pepsi ventures into healthy snacking have met a similar fate leading to the harsh realization that many if not most of nutritionally educated consumers have already found niche brands, are loyal to them and are unlikely to side with a giant that they already deem to have misaligned incentives.

Regardless of the outcomes between Pepsi and the government your humble narrator thinks we all deserve to know what’s what about the food we eat. Eating a Twinkie with HIGH FIBER!! plastered on the box would be akin to purchasing a 500,000 mile car off a used car lot because the salesman scribbled NEW TIRES!!GREAT DEAL!! on the windshield. As consumers most of us want to believe we can accept the manufacturer’s label’s claims. After all, the government regulates these claims don’t they? Wouldn’t it be wrong for the people who provide our food to be anything but honest? Let’s take a minute to wake up.

The company that sells you your white eggs and enriched bread is no different than the used car salesman offloading his lemons. Food, like any other industry is driven by revenues. What the public wants is what food companies will provide. If eggs produced using green energy are hot this week, egg companies will consume ten percent of their energy with windmills, now they’re green eggs. If eggs produced with extra vitamins are hot this week, egg companies will throw a handful of vitamin D on the chicken feed, now they’re vitamin eggs. This is sales and marketing 101.

Pepsi is here to stay for the indefinite future. Governments may always be about one step behind when it comes to protecting the nutritional welfare of an educated society. So take it upon yourself to slowly begin the process of regulating your own nutritional intake. And remember that no one is ever finished learning all there is to know, it is a lifelong process.

SIDEBAR

So what are us normal people who love to eat to do? I mean, we do have to eat… don’t we!? I can’t solve all of your problems, but I can teach you 5 fairly easy rules that could help your health immensely:

1. Avoid Trans Fat and High Fructose Corn Syrup - These manmade food additives where developed as cheap alternatives to natural fat and sugar. In one study it was found that 7 grams of trans fat per day, the amount found in a medium French fry, increased your chance of cardiac failure after a year’s worth of consumption by 50%.

2. Go Organic with your Animals - Organic foods aren’t a cure all, but what organic does mean is that those foods have not been raised or produced with antibiotics, hormones or carnivorous feed stocks. Switching your poultry, dairy, beef and other animal products to organic wherever possible can have great benefits to your health.

3. Don’t Drink the Fire Water, or the Sugar Water for that Matter - It has been proven that many obese Americans lose substantial amounts of weight when they substitute their high calorie drinks for low calorie substitutes. Good fill-ins for soda would be tea sweetened with stevia or a mixture of 100% fruit juice, sparkling water and a few drops of mint or lemon oil.

4. Learn the Glycemic Index - Merely changing your carbohydrate intake from bad ones such as donuts, to good ones such as granola cereal can help you stay healthier. Some good examples of quality carbohydrates are oatmeal, beans, lentils, brown rice and other whole grains. If you don’t feel like eating these things raw(which I will not blame you for) simply search for the ingredient followed by “recipe” in your search engine. You should be able to find several thousand to choose from instantly.

5. Cheat - It’s ok to go overboard every once and a while. As you start your new endeavor to eat healthier, vow that for three meals a week you’ll eat whatever you want. As long as you aren’t gorging and staying within the guidelines at every meal, a few meals a week where you don’t hold back is ok and can actually be beneficial for your body. Wherever possible cheat with organic ingredients.

The Economist's March 27th article entitled "Pepsi gets a Makeover,"
(1,200 words)

Pass the Low Fat, Reduced Sodium, Lower Sugar Tostitos

Is Pepsi in an evangelical crusade against the added trans fats and sugars in their products? No. No they aren’t. Pepsi is scared into shaking, like a sailor clinging to the mast of a sinking ship. In Pepsi's case, their ship is sinking into a sea of government regulation. Pepsi has to sell its products to make profits, bottom line. The problem for Pepsi lies in a public which is steadily becoming more informed and conscious regarding their food choices.

Pepsi is desperately trying to avoid regulation wrought road of big tobacco. High dollar anti-smoking campaigns and government levies aim to strangle big tobacco’s profit margins and educate an increasingly hip general public about the dangers of smoking. Pepsi wants to become the government’s next whipping boy and the public’s next failing health scapegoat as bad as the Marlboro man wants to spend his afternoon accessorizing at Louis Vuitton.

Pepsi is nervous enough to espouse they will remove every high sugar vending machine from k-12 schools by 2012. Pepsi also recently claimed salt, sugar and fat content will be reduced from their brands by 25% before year 2020. The trend is towards healthy nutritional choices and Pepsi is quietly distancing itself from its rationalizing and deflecting public relations policies of the 90s, when Pepsi’s marketing campaigns referred to their snacks as "fun for you."

Pepsi’s stuck between looming government and social pressures to provide healthier options and the reality that in many cases their best customers don’t want those options. “Fatty Boom-Boom” is a term you might’ve heard thrown around a locker room or two to reference people who consume 24 cans of Pepsi a week and require a forklift to use the restroom. Pepsi has a slightly more affectionate, yet equally as creepy and much more sterile term for the boom-booms, who just happen to be their best customers: “frequent users”.

So what happens when you alienate the “frequent users” and aim into the hipper, more educated organic soy milk sipping and sustainable denim wearing hipsters? You get "Tropicana Juice". A financial disaster compared to the launch of "New Coke" which fell on deaf ears and uninterested palates during the mid eighties. Other Pepsi ventures into the health snack niche have met similar fates. Pepsi and other large conglomerates who are now throwing their hat into the health conscious ring are receiving a harsh realization. Many nutritionally hip consumers have already found the niche brands which they are loyal to.

Regardless of the outcomes of Pepsi and their government regulation affairs, I think we all deserve to know what’s what about the food we put in our bodies. Eating a Twinkie with HIGH FIBER!! plastered on the box would be akin to purchasing a 500,000 mile, 60’s era car off a used car lot for reliable transportation solely because the salesman scribbled NEW TIRES!! on the windshield. We often want to believe that we can accept the manufacturer’s claims which labels our food’s packaging. After all, the government regulates these claims don’t they? And wouldn’t it just be plain wrong for the people who serve us our food to not be anything but one hundred percent crystalline clear about the pros and cons of their products? Wake up. The company selling you your white eggs and bread is no different than the used car salesman offloading his lemons. Realize that food, like almost every other industry is driven by sales and revenues. Whatever the public wants to see and see is what food companies will show and tell them. If eggs produced using green energy are a hit this week, the companies who produce eggs will begin using ten percent of their energy to produce those eggs with windmills, now they’re green eggs and the consumer is happy again. If eggs produced with extra vitamins are a hit this week, the companies who produce eggs will locate commercial grade vitamin D at ten cents per ton and throw in a handful or two on top of the chicken feed, now they’re vitamin eggs and the consumer is happy again. This is sales and marketing 101.Smoke and mirrors will diffuse the true intention, to get you to buy eggs no matter what the latest trend, latest fad or latest Johnny come lately tells you to.

So what are us normal people, who love to eat but would also like to refrain from reducing our years of quality life to do? I mean we do have to eat, don’t we!? I can’t solve all of your problems and to teach you 5 fairly easy rules that can help immensely:

1. Avoid Trans Fat and High Fructose Corn Syrup - Both of these manmade food additives where developed as cheaper alternatives to natural fat and sugar. Your body still has little use for either. In one study it was found that 7 grams of trans fat per day, the amount found in a medium French fry, increased your chance of cardiac failure by 50%.

2. Go Organic with your animals - It’s true, organic isn’t a cure all. But what organic does mean is that the foods with the USDA Organic label, have not been raised or produced with antibiotics, hormones or carnivorous feed stocks. Changing your poultry, dairy, beef and other animal products to organic wherever possible can have great benefits to your health.

3. Unleash your inner Julia Childs - Here’s an easy way to get even the busiest people to re embrace their inner chef. Set a goal to prepare just one meal per month. “But I don’t know how to cook!” The first time I wanted to cook shrimp I googled “shrimp recipes” and I found at least half a dozen sites dedicated to shrimp recipes, so the problem is not that you can’t find a good recipe. Just follow the directions and repeat this mantra “Everything is going to be ok.”

4. Learn the Glycemic Index - Merely changing your carbohydrate intake from bad ones, donuts, to good ones, granola cereal can help you stay healthier. Some good examples of quality carbohydrates are oatmeal, beans, lentils, brown rice and other whole grains. Again if you aren’t familiar how to prepare these foods so they taste better than your shoe, refer to rule 3.

5. Cheat - Yes that’s right, you can cheat. It’s ok to go overboard every once and a while, as you start your new endeavor to eat more healthy, vow for three meals a week you won’t count calories, fats, proteins, fibers or anything else that can take the fun out of pigging out. As long as you aren’t gorging at every meal, a few meals a week where you do is ok and can actually be beneficial.

Pepsi is here to stay for the indefinite future. Governments may always be about one step behind when it comes to protecting the nutritional welfare of an educated society. So take it upon yourself to slowly begin the process or regulating your own nutritional intake. And remember that no one is ever finished learning all there is to know, it is a lifelong process.


The Economist's March 27th article entitled "Pepsi gets a Makeover,"
(1,200 words)

Portrait of a Person / "final" revision

My grandma walks kind of like my dog. After he’s spent the day scouting gopher holes beneath the brier patches that run along the fence line, he’ll come home wearing the scratches and hobbles he’s gathered from the day’s fun. He’s a smart dog. He’s learned if he telegraphs his injuries too much, I’ll be less likely to let him play, and then he’ll have to spend time in his kennel while he heals up, and he only lives to chase those gophers. Before he comes back home from gopher hunting he licks his cuts and then struts to his big wool blanket like he’s made of stone, then collapses from exhaustion.

On second thought the way my grandma walks also reminds me a lot of Joe Montana. Grandma embodies one of his more famous sayings, “You gotta play injured.” Her stride conjures up images of a popular photo of Joe, you’ve probably seen the one. Joe’s back is turned, walking off the field, his uniform is soiled and wet with sweat. Grandma doesn’t wear a uniform, just some old barn clothes, but she works just as hard as Joe. She takes the same pride in her living as Joe. I’m sure they both get the same sense of satisfaction after a long day is done.

Grandma’s walk also reminds me of an impression. When I was young, working with my friend Jack, he demonstrated what his father, who is eighty years old, would look like if he didn’t stretch in the mornings. Jack kind of stuck his arms out straight to the side when impersonating his father. He stuck his arms out really stiff, with his hands about a foot from his body. He spread his feet about a foot apart with the same stiffness in his arms. Jack made it look like he was wearing a long sleeve shirt and pants so tight he couldn’t bend at his elbows or knees. Then Jack shuffled sideways with his stiff legs and arms while keeping them perfectly straight. Jack made his father look like someone trying to make a snow angel who had terrible arthritis or like a crab that somehow learned to walk upright. After Jack’s impression he and I both had a good laugh. The comedy of it was from knowing full well we aren’t above the laws of nature and age. One day Jack’s dad will be me and Jack, I guess it’s normal to laugh about the things we’re most uneasy about. Grandma’s walk reminded me of Jack’s impersonation of his father.

Now I know it seems like I’m giving my grandmother an awfully hard time, but these are the ways I convey to you how hard a worker she is. She does her best to hide her injuries from my nosy aunts, who give her endless static, but they already know who the only person that will ever slow down my grandma is. Death himself; and at least she won’t have to hear his mouth, though I’m sure they smile at each other nearly every day. Grandma doesn’t let a little crick in the neck or lump on her knee slow her down, she takes the reins of her body and puts it through her paces without mercy. Up at dawn and down at dusk. Gauging by her health, I guess death has an affinity for simple people with good senses of humor and slow southern charm. Grandma’s driven her body to hell’s gate and back without taking so much as a sun burn.

One of the many anomalies of my Grandma is her diet. There are only three types of people on this planet that can consume the same breakfast as my grandma enjoys every morning without immediately going into an aorta seizing, lard induced catatonia. Eskimos, aboriginal whale fishers and true blooded, down south, farm and horse folks. Basically, to consume this breakfast, you need to be moving from about five in the morning until around ten at night and burn about five thousand calories per day. The smell of her cooking animal fat in the air at dawn is a much better alarm clock than any Sony I’ve ever owned because bacon has this miraculous way of turning off the switch in your brain that makes waking up such a chore. Bacon puts your mind on one track. Eat the bacon. It’s too bad, but most mornings I don’t have any bacon. I don’t burn half the calories that grandma does.

I stumble into the kitchen every morning to make my delicious breakfast of egg whites and oatmeal and I always notice her still warm frying pan containing all of the necessary elements of a well balanced cardiac arrest. Grandma enjoys the things that I could never touch with a 2 foot grill skewer. Scrapple, thick cut bacon, pork shoulder, ham hock. When she’s feeling healthy she’ll have some grits with butter, in a one to one ratio. I swear I could make a list five feet long scribed with the fattiest parts of creatures that Grandma gets away with savoring, while the rest of us suffer eating “egg substitute” and “low-carb wheat bread” to keep our waist lines in check. Grandma burns more calories than a California wildfire fighter, so I guess she’s earned the right to gobble down what she wants to.

Grandma knows the value of a good days work. If you’ve ever worked a day where by its end you’re dripping in the sweat of your labors, you already know grandma’s lifestyle. Not every minute of her work is fun, but at the end of the day she’s physically done something. Work connects Grandma to her animals, it connects her to the earth, and it humbles her. For me, those days of sweating like a sieve, baking in the sun and freezing in the cold all ended after numerous summers and falls spent helping my uncle in playing in concrete and working on a family friend’s turkey farm under the summer sun. Honest work taught me that I am not cut out for a lifetime of that style of work. I guess that’s the nice way of saying I’m not much good for manual labor. If you ask my grandma about my work ethic, she’ll flat out tell you that I’m a wimp, but I think she’s just joking, or at least for my pride’s sake I really hope so.

It is a mystery as to what keeps Grandma going. Some say she’s doing what she can to keep busy, not concern herself too much with my granddad, who passed a few years back. I have a theory, yet not many know it. Everyone is addicted to something which keeps their bellows fanning the embers of their soul. Grandma is addicted to the simple life. You know that feeling you get after finally straightening out your basement that’s been on your to do list for years? This is Grandma’s feeling every day. Grandma gets it done. Grandma’s guided by a moral compass as finely tuned as Swiss movements. Grandma’s been blessed with a genuine respect for authorities I only wish I possessed. One time I drove her to the hardware store and I came to a traffic light which showed red. I let the front wheels roll a few feet past the white line. By the appalled look on Grandma’s face you’d think she just then realized that I was Billy the Kid and we were speeding away from a bank robbery. Grandma’s never gotten a traffic ticket, there’s one way I wish I were like Grandma.

Grandma’s stride can send shivers down the spines of her family members yet she breaks horses, bales hay and rises and sets with the sun. Grandma’s breakfast could turn a gym rat into a house cow in under a month yet she runs errands, babysits grandchildren and provides for her family. Grandma’s got calloused hands yet many hearts have been healed by their tender touch. Grandma’s a blessing, even when she’s hobbling.


(1,299 words)

Article Response - Pass the low fat, reduced sodium, lower sugar Tostitos please

After reading the Economist's March 27th article entitled "Pepsi gets a Makeover," you may be tempted into thinking Pepsi is leading an evangelical crusade against added trans fats and sugars in their products. You would be wrong. In fact Pepsi has been scared to shaking like a sailor clinging to the mast of a sinking ship, only in Pepsi's case, their ship is sinking into a sea of government regulation.

Pepsi, ever fearful that they will go the way of the big tobacco companies, who are blamed for every case of lung cancer or premature respiratory related death since the inception of cigarettes, desperately desires to avoid a similar overly scrutinized path. Pepsi has become nervous enough to remove every high sugar cola vending unit from k-12 schools by 2012. Pepsi also aims to reduce the salt, sugar and fat content in their numerous brands by 25% before 2020. The last thing Pepsi needs or wants is to become the governments whipping boy example in the war against obesity. As the trend towards healthy nutritional choices gains social appeal, Pepsi is attempting to quietly distance itself from its rationalizing and deflecting public relations policies of the 90s when it referred to its products as "fun for you."

You can't help but feel a little bad for Pepsi. Stuck between looming government and social pressures to provide healthier options and the hard reality that when consumers are provided with healthier options, many of them prefer to remain fatty boom booms than adopt an entirely new lifestyles. Several years ago Pepsi launched "Tropicana Juice," a product aimed towards health conscious consumers. It was a financial disaster often compared to the unsuccessful launch of "New Coke". Other ventures into health snacks have met a similar fate. The hip consumers targeted in Pepsi's "healthy" new launches may have already found niche brands which they are loyal to and may be unaffected by the often times transparent, too little, too late conglomerate attempts at sparking their interest.

The side effects of our favorite foods and beverages may not be in our best interest, yet often we choose to consume them anyway. As a consumer would you rather have the choice as to what you put in your mouth? Inevitably you may have to investigate every product you choose for its quality and its companies ethics. Would you rather have these issues left to your government and the lobbies which persuade them?

Dialogue Piece

…fires full magazine of handgun rounds…

“I don’t know what the deal is with me right now. You think it’s just nerves?”

“Probably so, you haven’t shot in a while have you?”

“No, it’s been a while.”

“Well you did pretty good on the first magazine, all 8 patterned as tight as a half dollar, and 5 bulls eyes!”

“Yeah, the first two mags went down fine, but now my hands shaking like a leaf, I don’t get it. It must be my nerves are shot. I need to build back up to where I used to be. Let me try and lean up against this tree.”

…fires another magazine…

“That tree doesn’t seem to be helping much. Maybe you just need to rest a while. You know you can’t expect to jump right back into it and have nerves of steel right off of the bat. You’d have to be like Dirty Harry or something!”

“No, I know. It’s just frustrating. I need to shoot that way every time, I’m too inconsistent”

“It’s just temporary, you can’t rush it. Just work your way from 2 magazines a day to 5 a day to 10 a day over the course of a month or so, you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, I guess. Let’s set up that larger rifle range so I can rest on the bag and shoot from prone. I’m not going to let my flaky nerves ruin our range day.”

“You got it, take a walk downfield and set up these new targets and I’ll go grab the spotting scope from inside.”

(265 words)

Profile of a Person; Draft 1; "Grandma"

My grandma has a funny way of walking when she’s injured, kind of like my dog when he tries to hide the limp he’s gained from running through the briar patches. He’s learned by now that if I see him limping around, I’ll be less inclined to let him play, and he only lives to chase that stick. My grandma reminds me a lot of Joe Montana. She embodies one of his more famous sayings, being, “You gotta play injured.”
One time when I was younger, working with my friend Jack he demonstrated what his father, who is eighty years old, would look like if he didn’t limber up now and again by going out on his runs and rowing sessions in the lake. Jack’s father is eighty years old and spry as ever, but he still needs to warm up for an lengthy amount of time just like a mid seventies Buick needs to warm up for thirty minutes before it will turn over in a Detroit winter. When Jack performed the impression, he kind of stuck his arms out straight to the side, stiff like with his hands about a foot from his body, while he spread his feet about a foot apart with the same stiffness. He made himself look like he was wearing a long sleeve shirt and pants so tight that he couldn’t move at the elbows or knees. I imagined that his impression sort of looked like one of the characters in those white paper doll chains that kids make in grade school to hang up around the ceiling. Jack then added animation to the pose. He shuffled sideways with his stiff legs and arms while making movements similar to those you’d see when someone’s making a snow angel. Jack’s impression basically made his dad look like a crab with arthritis who somehow learned to walk upright. This is the most accurate way I can think of describing the disjointed walking movements of my grandmother. After she’s taken a tumble, she does her best to hide her injuries from my nosy aunts who will give her endless static. But my aunts already know full well that the only person who will ever slow down my grandma is death himself, and at least she won’t have to hear his mouth. While Jack would make the impression of his father, he and I both would have a good laugh at the expense of his old man. The comedy of it came from the unease we felt about our own mortality, we know full well we aren’t above the laws of nature and age. We decided to smile at our mortality while we could, laugh and be grateful, and rejoice in our youth while there was still time. I think my grandmother must smile at death every day the way she works herself at her age. And by her health I guess death has an affinity for simple people with a good sense of humor.
There are three types of people on this planet that can eat the same type of breakfast that my grandmother enjoys every morning without going immediately into glut tonic, lard induced catatonia. Eskimos, aboriginal whale fishers and true blooded, down south, farm and horse folks. Basically, to consume this breakfast, you need to be moving from about five in the morning until around ten at night and burn about five thousand calories per day. The smell of her cooking animal fat in the air at dawn is a better alarm clock than any Sony I’ve ever owned. Bacon has this miraculous way of making you forget about the daily grind. Bacon puts your mind on one track. Eat the bacon. It’s too bad, but most mornings I don’t have any bacon because I don’t burn even half of the calories that she does.
As I stumble into the kitchen every morning to make my delicious breakfast of egg whites and oatmeal, I always notice her still warm frying pan, which contains all of the necessary elements of a well balanced cardiac arrest. She enjoys things that I could hardly touch with a 2 foot grill skewer. Scrapple, thick cut bacon, pork shoulder, ham hock, I could make a list five feet long with other bits of the fattiest parts of creatures that she gets away with consuming like a fish does water. When she’s feeling healthy she’ll have some grits with butter, in a one to one ratio.
If you’ve ever worked a day where by the end you’re dripping in sweat, you’ll know the rigors of my grandmother’s lifestyle, except she lives it that way every day. Not every minute of physical work is enjoyable, but at the end of the day you’ve actually done something with your body that can’t be undone and connects you to the earth. It’s humbling. For me those days of sweating like a sieve, baking in the sun and freezing in the cold all ended after numerous summers and falls spent helping my uncle in concrete contracting and working on the family friend’s turkey farm. This honest work taught me that I am not cut out for a lifetime of that style of work. I guess that’s the nice way of me telling you that I don’t enjoy manual labor, because if you ask my grandma, she’ll you that I’m a wimp. I guess I can stomach her chastising. Being that it comes from a source that makes Rosie the riveter look like a bigger diva than Mariah Carrey.
It is a mystery to nearly everyone my grandmother meets as to what keeps her going. Some say she’s just doing what she can to keep herself busy and not concern herself too much with my granddad, who passed back in two thousand and four. I think everyone is addicted to one thing or another that keeps the embers in their souls bellowed, fueling them through this crazy life. I know that my grandmother is plain and simple addicted, in fact she’s your classic case of simplicity junkie. She’s constantly caught in that feeling you get after you’ve cleaned out the whole basement that you’ve been eyeballing for nine months. My grandma just gets things done. She’s humble and she’s guided by a moral compass more finely tuned than Swiss bearings. She has a genuine respect and regard for authority that I only wish I could poses. One time I was driving her and I came to a stop at a traffic light and let the front wheels roll a few feet past the white line. By the appalled look that my minor traffic offense left on her face you would think that my grandma just realized she was trapped riding shotgun with Billy the Kid.
"Instead of going to the gym all the time, you could do some more shoveling or something around here? That's a work out, huh?" I remind her that working out takes place in a controlled environment and the work she does is prone to injury. Just about once a week I hear a story about how she fell off a horse, or a tractor or a ladder. And she'll never mention that she’s taken a tumble, but I can always tell by the little extra hobbles in her steps that she’s gone down somewhere from some height. Those hobbles send phantom chills through my body, like her DNA is trying to communicate to mine that she's a madwoman and needs to settle down before she's paralyzed. But I know she’ll have it no other way.
“Any work is good work,” she says. I would strongly beg to differ, but I see where she’s coming from. A day you don’t do anything to her is a wasted day. For me it would be a day that you don’t learn anything. In my favorite Jet Li film he systematically defeats all of his enemies in the city and surrounding areas until one day his own family is murdered in cold blood, out of vengeance by a fallen rival school. Jet Li becomes disenchanted by his own selfish ways of blind lust and conquering. He roams the country side, finding a village built on terraced hills and simple customs. The village people teach him to cultivate rice and contribute to the community. He ends up living in the village for several years, enjoying the things he’d taken for granted, the changing of the seasons, building healthy relationships and working for an honest living.
Many of my modern day associates, myself included, have conditioned ourselves to believe that what frees us is attaining those things that are constructed, complex and often convoluted. My grandmother is an example of a timeless humility that is a testament to healthful benefits that are realized by abiding the humbler forces of nature. She knows the steward is wiser than the conqueror.
(1,492 words)

Nonfiction Story Draft 2 - "My Gym"

I’ve called it “my gym” on account of I’ve worked there two and a half years and I’m still the only one there who knows the difference between his ass and the hole in the middle of a 45 pound plate. As cliché as it sounds, It’s also like my little home away from home. Well, I guess it’s really more like a smellier, more dramatic version of a home away from home, but it’s been enough fun for me to hang around this long anyway.
Every day in my gym it’s the same thing. The place has a timeless quality, so much so I’m convinced if I moved half way around the world for decades and returned home I’d walk through the glass doors and hear the same thumping of feet and whirring of treadmill motors. The ventilation system would still be dumping piles of cool air onto the gym floor and the same bar bells would be clanking into their cradles while the smell of rubber flooring hung over the weight pit. Hundreds of hours I’ve spent in the gym, walking the floor during a workout, battling dust with the commercial vacuum cleaner, reclined in the leather office chair. The features of this place have been burned onto my conscious.
Contemporary design elements designed into the gyms décor create a non-threatening environment. This environment attracts what the fitness sales guys affectionately refer to as the “de-conditioned market”. Compiled into that tidy little demographic label are the house moms who have gained a little extra padding hustling junior to soccer practice, living on a diet delivered solely through a drive-through window. Ex-military men whose beer guts march horizontally, as their days of mandatory marching come to an end. Every other average Joe or Josephine with diabetes, heel spurs, arthritis and fifty to one-hundred and fifty extra pounds whose fitness resolutions begin ever year around December 31st and promptly end around January 5th.
Neutral colored green and purple pastel paint covers the walls. Ergonomic, friendly looking machines in powder coated silver stand in rows conceived to direct the human traffic through their routines. Mostly devoid of intimidating meat heads, you won’t hear too much slamming around of weights and frat house conversation in my gym. The weights are all rubberized, big red safety buttons on the wall and white lanyards with little green buttons can be pressed by the disabled or the panicked to alert 911 of emergencies. Members are typically cordial and clean up after themselves as top forty hits crank out low over the radio, pretty mundane stuff.
Leaning back against the reclining springs in the leather office chair I grab the days papers and begin to read them over as I crack open a bottle of water. Sipping off of the top of the bottle I lean back again and again, rocking, relaxing and thinking about how to tackle the day. One of our members, “Big John” as we call him, leans his head into my office, “Hey there old buddy. How’s the weather treating you old Brandt? We got dumped on pretty good uh?” John’s a great big ol’ Aussie and he carries his accent with him like a fifty pound trunk at the airport that he’s afraid to set down. John has wild red, sun bleached hair which makes him look like he’s just returned from spending years on safari in the Great Victoria Desert. John’s about as wide and stout as a compact car and my stereotyping mind pictures him playing rugby with a bunch of other Brits in his heyday, raising hell, chugging one liter cans of Fosters and shooting wallabies pinned in the headlights of chasing Land rovers . “Not too terrible I reply, how’s your car holding up in this awful stuff?” Since I’ve worked here John has single handedly help to raise my game in small talk, somewhat of a lost art in this day of twitter and skype. “Not too bad old boy, just had to dig myself out of an igloo this morning,” John chuckled as he replied. One time I confided in John that I hadn’t been accepted for a second round interview at a large firm which was pretty important to me. He knew I was going through a bummer and he said, “Those bloody human resources bastards are idiots. Worthless as tits on a bull they are, you need to knock down their door or they’ll have their way with you.” Eloquently put. The next day I put in just about a dozen calls and emails to the firms various departments. Two weeks later I had my interview. Crikey good show. John’s “Fosters Keg”, is what he refers to as his mid section, and it hasn’t shrunk an inch since he joined the gym. My friend and co-worker Brandon told me one day that for some people who come to the gym, the aspect of socializing and working out is the highlight of their day and when he first told me I couldn’t believe it. As time went on, I began to know many of these people. I do what I can to make their experience fun for them. Please god let the highlight of my life be retiring on a private beach in the Caribbean or South America, not sweating on some cold piece of steel in the middle of a strip mall.
“Hey, hey, man, how ya doin?” It’s “tall Tom”. He caws as he struts in the entrance, ducking to miss the commercial sized door jam. Literally, the guys like 7 feet even, when he runs on the treadmill he has to constantly crouch down and hit the keypad to change speeds, which makes him look like one of those pecking bird desk ornaments, eternally caught between cawing and pecking. Tall Tom sells his insurance, and I guess he’s pretty good at it too because I became his client after only a year of meeting him.
Jay’s the big man on campus around the gym, every time he walks though the doors he’s strutting like a rooster, making certain not to make eye contact with anyone while throwing sideways glances at the ladies. Jay’s a real estate developer with one hundred plus properties, some of which are in Barbados, so George, a struggling mortgage broker, is always right on Jay’s heels. They’re always batting it back and forth, reliving some old high school sports glories, arguing over ESPN highlights or whispering about some “young honey” that just joined up. My Gym is often the equivalent of one big office water cooler, working here has gotten me some sharp skills shooting the shit.
Next comes Alex the bank manager, then Jacob the loan officer then Julie the real estate broker and then a half dozen more like them that’ve offered me positions once I graduate. Note to self: re-open a gym after you’ve made it just for the networking opportunities. The usual flock of house wives rolls in. Most of them are well reserved, except for Jessica, a Brazilian lady who’s much more flirtatious than the rest. She floats from one man to the other in the gym like a butterfly choosing flowers, most of the men humor her but the novelty of her presence typically wears thin once her motives arise. Desperate housewives, one of the truly sad elements in my gym. She pops into the office, “We all want to know whether or not Bobby and Phil are offering free classes anymore and where we can sign up. Aren’t you here late Mr. Brandt, were you waiting just for me?” I laugh sarcastically, “Yeah I’m here just for you.” We small talk about working out and I listen to her same old story. She is eating bad again and put on weight. In two weeks she is going to a wedding or a reunion or a dinner with the in-laws, to be honest I don’t even keep track anymore. She needs to “look pretty quick.” I’m a gym rat. After these two years I could pass for a shrink.
Every person in my gym comes from a different walk of life, their motivations being vastly different. They have one thing in common, they all have bodies that have whispered to them, “time for change,” and we collect all of those insecurities. I used to think we only collected membership fees, but we collect more than that. We collect dashed and new romances, born again track stars, quitters of vice and winners of competitions. We collect new mothers, the silently determined, the outwardly apathetic and the willingly malleable. We also collect ones like me. And I’ve never been great at saying what my strengths and weaknesses are, so I’ll just tell you how I got here and you can judge for yourself.

“Can you bring me some more ketchup please? Sir! Sir!”
“Sure thing Sir,” I whistle from between clenched teeth and a forced smile. I’m picturing top sizing the plastic ramekin of ketchup upside down on his head so it looks like one of those little hats on the tambourine playing monkey in that Stephen King movie. It’s near the end of my double shift. I’m starting to go snow blind from novelty stained glass lamps and bar lights reflecting off of shellacked wooden dining tables. I hate this job, with passion. Little kids run free from their parents around my feet. They’re flailing forks and knifes like mini-swashbucklers as I try and balance thirty pound trays of double-decker cheese fries and clam chowder. By the end of the night I’m picturing booting these little kids like field goals up into the novelty fish netting hanging from the ceiling. I have no idea how I used to play football and soccer for six to eight hours and be as chipper as a jack rabbit afterwards and now I can’t even pull a double at this little greasy spoon house of horrors without turning into some grouchy old miser who hates people. I hate this job, with fervor. I can’t wait until I cash out, so I can unwind while sitting on my ass, reclined in my car, the summer night’s breeze blowing through my window, zeppelin pouring from the radio. Ten minutes of this treatment and I’m right back to normal.
Two weeks into my waiting career I reach a tipping point. I set down my little lined pad near the order terminal and walk back into the kitchen during another night of poor tips and times. I catch the manager looking at me with a serious expression, “Brandt can I talk to you for a minute?” I oblige and we retire to a spot by the dishwashing station, out of the way from the constant stampede of busboys and waitresses with arms and tubs full of greased up, generic white flatware. “Brandt, there’s an African American couple who complained that you’re not serving them as well as their neighboring table with white guests. Now I’m not trying to imply anything but what’s going on here?” Anger and humor boiled from my depths.
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” I retort, letting out a chuckle of disbelief. “Those two are sitting next to each other in the booth and every time I walk up I’ve got to watch him with his hand up her skirt! You want me kneel down next to the table and take their order? I don’t care what race they are man but I’m not comfortable watching a skin flick while I’m trying to work!”
He looked shocked, “Alright Brandt, I believe you. I just wanted to make sure, you know what kind of area this is.”
“What kind of area this is?” I thought. “I’m the racist?”
I made my way to the bar, leaning on the far side for a time out, to reflect on my situation. For whatever reason I’ve always had an ability to keep jobs merely out of pride, sometimes holding out to the bitter end, even as the wheels fall off, because I don’t want to quit. “I’m getting older,” I thought to myself, “maybe knowing when to fold and quitting aren’t the same things.” I thought about the guys in the history books, the great business men and everyone else I’ve learned about and admired in formal and private studies. I decided no one who always plays it safe every time makes it anywhere in this world, they suffer slowly with tied hands, drowning in monotony. They choose hope over action, and while it is foolish to act on a whim, it’s equally as foolish to stay stagnant because of a lack of faith.
I walked back into the manager’s office and grabbed Steve, the owner. He was a younger, pretty hip guy who I got along with all right. I told him I put in my two weeks. Without batting an eye he thanked me for putting in my time and told me thanks for helping out while I could. The turnover in these places is ridiculous and I didn’t wonder why. I walked back out to the bar.
One of the younger busboys, Erik, was there fooling around with his bus tub pretending to work with a few of his Hispanic buddies. Some nights I’d played soccer with the Hispanic guys and their families out in the parking lot after work. I liked them. They were down to earth, hard working family people who focused on living daily life. It’s good to be around people who know how to enjoy the small things. They reminded me of the year and a half I lived with my first girlfriend, we worked simple jobs and our paramount joy was found in a walk or a plate of steaming wontons. Simple is good. Erik on the other hand, already had one foot in the slammer and he was only 17. Erik was making things complicated. He was talking to his buddies about hustling pot and partying.
“Man, so what if I have to sell a little weed here and there to get by?” he finished up his conversation with them as I entered the scene. “So Brandt, why are you quitting anyway?”
“Have I ever told you how they catch monkeys in the Congo?” I asked him.
“Nah man, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Trappers in the jungle hollow out a coconut and carve a little hole in it just big enough for the monkey to fit his hand in. They screw the coconut to a tree with the hole facing up and put a handful of peanuts in it. The monkey smells the peanuts, reaches into the coconut, grabs the whole handful of peanuts, and tries to pull his hand out, but he can’t because now he’s making a fist and the hole’s too small! Monkeys aren’t stupid, they’re one of the “smarter” animals in the jungle, but he’s mesmerized by the tasty nuts in his hand. For hours he tries to pull his fist out of the hole constantly, but he won’t let go of the nuts. The trapper sneaks up to the monkey, who’s crazy and senseless at this point, and the trapper shoots him. Easy as 1-2-3. The monkey did all of the trapper’s work for him. He made the trapper rich with his blood and sweat. In the end he had nothing to show except a hand that was only full as long as it trapping him.” I shuffled back from foot to foot in my slip resistant Sketchers, trying to aid the aching in my feet.

“Yo, you’re crazy man. So what in the hell does that mean?” the busboy asked after he’s grown impatient with the riddle.
“It means never be afraid to let go of the peanuts.”
My final shift ended in two weeks. As I drove to the gym I pondered the hardships I’d faced thus far in my education. I needed money, but I didn’t want to ask my mom, she had enough to worry about with my other brothers and sisters. Dad was decently well off, but in his first attempt at launching a consulting firm, the venture quickly became unmanageable for him and the IRS was taking him for a ride. There were no other ideas as to where I should go. It was too early in my academic career to have gained the experience to land a descent internship and too late to go taking steps backwards, applying at another burger joint to make ends meet.
I could feel my lungs getting ready to bellow as I laced up my sneakers. First I’d take a lap outdoors, around the shopping center in the night air, to loosen things up before I went inside to finish up on the treadmill. I was finishing my last stretch of the outdoor portion of my workout. Heading back to the main doors I noticed a small, beat up Isuzu Rodeo slowing down as it pulled away from me out of the parking lot. I realized it was John, the owner of the club. He was a multi-millionaire and he drove around that beat-up little SUV everywhere he went, I guess wealthy people stay wealthy for a reason.
He rolled down his window as I jogged up to meet him. He said, “Who’s that?”
“It’s me Brandt. How you doing man?”
“Oh Brandt, what’s up boyyyy.? What are you doing? Running out here?” John is over fifty years old, yet he talks and acts the age of someone half his senior. He’s got an easy way with people and It’s obvious for most to see that the years have been kind to him even though his youthful mannerisms can make him seem somewhat eccentric.
“Yeah man, just trying to get my mile time down,” I wheezed trying to catch my breath.
“What are you doing it in? Like 7:30?” he asked.
“Yeah, like 7:30. More like 6:45 if I didn’t stop to talk,” I ribbed at him a little bit.
“So what have you been up to? How’s school?” John shows a genuine concern for most people that he meets, maybe because he was a minister for about a decade before heading back into the fitness industry. He was a likeable enough guy, so the sales aspect of the job came to him naturally.
“Yeah school is good. Just trying to find a job right now you know.”
Just then he looked like a light bulb went off in his head, then like he was rolling something over in his mind. “I’ll tell you what. My sales girl, you know Emily, just quit to go over to the FAA for a full time thing with benefits and everything. Why don’t you call me tomorrow and we’ll see if we can work something out?”
“Yeah man. I definitely will, that would be great,” I was excited.
“Alright bro I’ll see you tomorrow,” John sped off in his little beater.
I decided to take another lap around the gym.

Profile of a Person

I think I'll probably just stick with my ol' grand-nanny. I may choose to go with my uncle though, he's another very colorful character, tyypical country good ol' boy, kind of reminds me of David Sedaris's brother in the piece we read.

Sketch of Someone Performing an Activity

Rolling over in bed and grumbling to myself as the daylight pours into my window I hear the dogs barking and the tractor starting. “Oh my god,” I think to myself, “how and why does she do this every freaking morning?” Before I even opened my eyes I smelled the bacon, scrapple and toast of which each is either slathered or cooked in full fat butter. Who would guess that a breakfast fully capable of turning Jack Lalanne into Michael Moore after just one sitting could effectively rocket my seventy year old grandmother from sunup to sundown enduring all the toils and labors of a full time stable manager.

Peeking from behind my curtains, I check my phone messages and there she goes as usual, hobbling down the driveway like rural clockwork. A bale of hay bare hugged in her arms she teeters like a marionette down the driveway to the watering trough.
What keeps her going? To say it’s in her nature would be too easy. Some say it’s probably a combination of the memory of my granddad and her faith but I think I know that beyond that she’s also just a hardcore simplicity junkie. She’s in a constant state of that wholesome, accomplished feeling you get when you spend an entire day just getting things done. “Any work is good work,” she’ll say.

"Instead of going to the gym all the time you could do some more shoveling or something around here? That's a work out too, huh?" she'll rib at me from time to time. I tell her that the gym is a controlled environment and the work she enjoys invites injuries. "You're such a wimp", she laughs. I guess I can stomach that, coming from someone who makes Rosie the riveter look like Kim Kardashian. She is literally a 70 year old stunt woman. Just about once a week I hear a story about how she fell off a horse, or a tractor or a ladder. She'll never mention when she’s taken a tumble, but I can always tell by the little extra hobbles in her steps that send phantom chills through my body, like her DNA is trying to communicate to mine that she's a madwoman and needs to settle down before she's paralyzed.

(379 words)

Movie Review ; The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker is a Modern day war film released in the past year showcasing the struggles faced by modern soldiers in Iraq. The film follows an Explosive Ordinance Division (EOD) whose mission is to locate and disarm Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). The EOD consists of a three man unit led by Sergeant Will James, highly successful at disarming IEDs, but whose unorthodox and sometimes reckless methods draw occasional scrutiny from the other two members of his team and the praise of higher ranking officers.

James’s unemotional character abandons normal caution and tactics as he repeatedly takes life threatening situations into his own hands against the pleas of his comrades. James is addicted to combat thinking of home only when seeing the bodies of children that remind him of his son. The film reveals that Sergeant James prefers the company of combat to that of his own family.

Private Owen Eldridge and Staff Sergeant JT Sanborne comprise the remaining two members of the EOD and are both counting the days until the end of their EOD rotation, 45 days from when James joins their unit. As the film progresses Sergeant James takes Eldridge and Sanborne under his wing and teaches them from his extensive special operations experience and James’s cool actions under pressure and no fear attitude begin to rub off on the unit. As their rotation with James progresses, Eldridge and Sanborn require less and less encouragement when acting quickly in harm’s way.

I recommend this film as an accurate portrayal modern Iraqi warfare. The story board and camera work focus well onto the experiences of a modern day US Army EOD team in Iraq.

(280 words)

Nonfiction Story Rough Draft - "My Gym"

I call it my gym because I have worked there for almost two years, and because it’s really become like a home away from home. Well, it’s become a slightly smellier, more dramatic home away from home, but something about it’s kept me working here for this long, for whatever reason anyway. Every day in my gym it’s the same thing, the place has this timeless quality. I could move half way around the world for a decade and return home to hear the same thumping of feet and whirring of the motor on the treadmill, the same indistinct clanking of iron from the weight pit and the same smell of battling odors, air freshening anti-bacterial deodorizer versus perspiration.

The contemporary design elements of the small space are meant to present a non-threatening place for individuals the fitness industry affectionately refers to as the “de-conditioned market”. These are the house moms that have gained a little extra padding while placing their kids needs before their own, the ex-military men whose beer guts march eastward as their days of mandatory personal training disappear into their youth and every other average Joe or Josephine with a few extra inches to lose.

Pastel greens and purples cover the walls while ergonomic, friendly looking equipment powder coated in sleek silver ornaments the landscape. You won’t find intimidating meat heads slamming around rusty weights and carrying on as if they were in a fraternity house. My gym’s weights are covered in rubber. Big red safety buttons and lanyards with little green buttons are there to be depressed at any moment that someone may need a paramedic. Members are typically cordial and clean up after themselves.

I lean back in my office chair and crack open a water bottle and begin to sip as a member, John, leans his head into my office, “Hey there how’s the weather treating you old Brandt?” John’s a great big old Aussie and he carries his accent with him. He has red, sun bleached hair which makes him look like he’s just returned from spending years in the Great Victoria Desert. He’s about as wide and stout as a compact car and I can picture him playing rugby with a bunch of other Brits in his heyday, raising hell and chugging one liter cans of Fosters. “Not too terrible I reply, how’s your car holding up in this stuff?” John has single handedly help sharpened my small talk skills over the past two years. I’ve learned a lot from him. One time when he asked how I was doing, I told him I hadn’t been accepted for a second round interview at a large firm, and that I was pretty bummed. He told me, “Those bloody human resources manager are idiots. Worthless as tits on a bull they are, you need to knock down their door or they’ll have their way with you.” The next day I put in a dozen calls and emails to their various departments and within the next two weeks I had my interview. John’s “Fosters Keg”, what he refers to as his mid section, hasn’t diminished one inch since he joined the gym, but the membership keeps him active and meeting new people and that’s enough for him.

“Hey, hey, man, how ya doin?” Here comes tall Tom, the guys like 7 feet even and he sells insurance. In fact I became his client after a year of knowing him. Then Jay struts like a rooster through the front doors, Jay’s a real estate developer with one hundred plus properties, some of which are in Barbados. George, a struggling mortgage broker, is right on Jay’s heels and they’re batting it back and forth while they relive old high school sports days, shoot the breeze about ESPN or howl over some young honey that just joined up. Alex the bank manager shuffles in. I must’ve met half a dozen more like him that have offered me positions once I graduate. The usual flock of house wives rolls in and the outgoing one of the bunch makes it her business to tell me what all the others are all thinking. “We all want to know whether or not Bobby and Phil are offering free classes anymore and where we can sign up. Aren’t you here late Mr. Brandt, were you waiting just for me?” She is a bubbly Brazilian lady that has less trouble flirting than some of the more reserved women who frequent the gym. I laugh sarcastically. “Yeah I’m here just for you,” She laughs. We small talk about working out and I listen to her same old story. She is eating bad again and put on weight, in two weeks she is going to some wedding or reunion or dinner with the in-laws, to be honest I don’t even keep track anymore, and she needs to “look pretty quick.”

Every person has a different motivation and their walks of life are all vastly different. What they have in common is they all have bodies that at one point or another have whispered to them, “time for a change.” And at my gym we collect them all. I used to think we collected membership fees, but we collect more than that. We collect dashed and new romances, born again track stars, quitters of vice and winners of competitions. We collect new mothers, the silently determined, the outwardly apathetic and the willingly malleable. We also collect ones like me. I’ve never been great at saying what my strengths and weaknesses are, so I’ll just tell you where I came from before the gym and you can guess for yourself.

“Can you bring me some more ketchup please? Sir!”

“Sure thing,” I whistle from between porcelain teeth and a forced smile. In my mind I’m picturing turning the plastic ramekin of ketchup upside down and plopping it on his head so it looks like one of those little hats that the tambourine playing monkey wears in the Stephen King movie. It’s near the end of my shift and I feel like I’m going snow blind from the reflections of the novelty stained glass lamps in the shellacked wooden dining tables. Little kids run free from their parents around my feet flailing forks and knifes like a mini-swashbucklers. They begin to look like good field goal opportunities that might end up in the novelty fish netting hanging from the ceiling if my straw finally snaps. More than eight hours serving tables on slip resistant Sketchers weaving through this madness and little Cindy-who down in who-ville turns into the saltiest old Grinch on the mountain, 20 minutes after I’m out of there and I’m back to level again.

I was two weeks into the job realizing that waiting may not be my cup of tea, but not wanting to quit, at least this soon. I walk back into the kitchen and see my manager looking at me with a serious expression, “Brandt can I talk to you for a minute?” I oblige and we retire to a spot by the dish washing station that is out of the constant stampede of employees. “There is an African American couple who complained that you are not serving them as well as the neighboring table with white guests. Now I’m not trying to imply anything but what’s going on here?” At the same time anger and humor boil from my depths, I’m already fed up, now this.
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me,” I retort. “Those two are sitting next to each other in the booth and every time I walk up I’ve got to watch him with his hand up her skirt! You want me kneel down next to the table and take their order? I don’t care what race they are man but I’m not comfortable watching a skin flick while I’m trying to work!"

He looked shocked, “Alright Brandt, I just wanted to make sure, you know what kind of area this is.”

After working here a few weeks, myself and the others working at the restaurant began to seem like survivors of a shipwreck to me. This job was whatever flotsam we could grab out of the beach break, to give us at least one ounce of something with value and credibility, but at the end of the day we really had nothing.

“Hey Boss-man I need to talk to you when you get a minute,” The owner was a relatively young guy, I got along with him alright so I didn’t really have any problems with telling him.

“What’s up Brandt?”

“I’m going to have to put my two weeks in Steve.”

“Why’s that?”

“You guys told me I could make a hundred dollars a night and I’m definitely not doing that, less than half that actually.”

“You are just getting started but I understand and I appreciate you putting your time in because I’m short on the schedule as it is.”

I walked back out to the bar. One of the younger busboys was there fooling around with his bus tub pretending to work with a few of his Hispanic buddies. I’d played soccer with those guys and their families out in the parking lot after work. They weren’t like me and the busboy though, they knew the taste of hardship, worked for every penny they had. It seemed like not once in their lives had they taken anything for granted. The busboy and I had something in common, spoiled by the relative comfort of our native upbringing, lacking enough initial guidance to make strides too young in the game. He already had one foot in the slammer and he was only 17 years old. He was talking to his buddies about pot and booze again,
“Man I have to sell a little weed here and there to get by, so what? So Brandt, why are you quitting anyway?”

“Have I ever told you how they catch gibbons in the Congo?” I asked him.

“Nah man, what the hell are you talking about?”

“A really smart guy told me this story one time. First trappers in the jungle hollow out a coconut and carve a little hole in it just big enough for the gibbon to fit his hand in if he straightens his fingers out. They screw the coconut to a tree with the hole facing up.”
I could tell he thought I was crazy but he was still interested so I kept going. “The trapper fills the coconut with a handful of peanuts and goes home for the night. Later, the gibbon smells the peanuts and reaches into the coconut, grabbing the whole handful of peanuts in his fist. When he goes to pull his hand out he can’t because the hole that let his straightened fingers pass through will not let his clenched fist back out. Now the gibbon knows deep inside that there are other meals he can find over the horizon, but he’s mesmerized in the moment at the big handful of treats in his hand. He tries all night long to get his clenched fist out of the hole. In the morning all the trapper has to do is walk up and cut off the monkeys head or shoot him from a short distance. The gibbon has done all of the trapper’s work for him.” I stood there for a minute shuffling back from foot to foot in my slip resistant Sketchers in an attempt to alleviate the aching in my feet.

“So what in the hell does that mean yo?” the busboy asked after he’d grown impatient with the riddle.

“It means never be afraid to let go of the peanuts.”

Two weeks passed and after my last shift at the restaurant I headed to my gym, the best place I knew how to blow off some steam. As I drove there I thought about how hard it had been for me to get this far with school. I didn’t want to ask my mom for money. My dad was decently well off but a private consulting firm venture that he had launched on his own quickly became unmanageable and the IRS was taking him for a ride to tunes I’m sure he had never wished to hear. I had no idea where I was going to get a job. It was too early in my academic career to land an internship and too late in it to go looking for a burger joint. I could feel my lungs getting ready to bellow as I laced up my sneakers. I decided to take a lap outdoors around the complex in the night air to loosen things up before I went inside my gym. As I rounded the corner heading back to the main doors I noticed a small, beat up Isuzu Rodeo slowing down as it pulled out from the parking lot, as if it were waiting for me. I realized it was John, the owner of the club. I knew he was a multi-millionaire and he drove around that beat-up little SUV everywhere he went.
He rolled down his window as I jogged up to meet him. He said, “Who’s that?”

“It’s me Brandt. How you doing man?”

“Oh Brandt, what’s up boyyyy.? What are you doing? Running out here?” John is over fifty years old yet he talks and acts the age of someone half his senior. It’s obvious for most to see that the years have been kind to him even though his youthful mannerisms can make him seem somewhat eccentric.

“Yeah man, just trying to get my mile time down,” I wheezed trying to catch my breath.

“What are you doing it in? Like 7:30?” he asked.

“Yeah, like 7:30. More like 6:45 if I didn’t stop to talk,” I ribbed at him a little bit.

“So what have you been up to? How’s school?” John has a genuine concern for most people that he meets.

“Yeah school is good. Just trying to find a job right now you know.”

John looked like he had an idea and then looked like he was rolling something over in his mind, “I’ll tell you what. My sales person, you know Emily, just quit to go over to the FAA. Why don’t you call me tomorrow and we’ll see if we can work something out.”

“Yeah man definitely that would be great,” I was excited.

“Alright bro I’ll see you tomorrow,” John sped off in his tiny beat up SUV and I decided to get in another lap just for old time sake.

Non Fiction Story Draft

“Just ask your mom if I can stay over the night.” The warmth of our merged lips shielded us from the October air and the breath circulated in each other’s hoods dampening the dry air between. Together we were like a portable space heater that winter, warming wherever we went, turning many cold cut notches into cozy nooks oblivious to the snow, the chill and the biting wind. “Do you think she’ll go for it, she likes me right?” Maybe if I convinced her to stay I could stay more often, who knows maybe I could move out. Wouldn’t that be something? Would they have ever thought this ‘wild’, young teenager could pull that one off? I wondered what ‘wild’ meant anyway. Did it mean thinking for yourself, or not thinking at all, either way I was inclined to do either above what I had seen so far in my short time. “Yes. She’ll probably let you stay, I’ll ask her later.” Our fingers intertwined burrowing back in forth inside each others jackets like a prairie dog who can’t decide which tunnel he wants to camp in. Like a millionaire boat captain our hands sailed over each other, chartering new harbors and setting off again with the aimless flapping of the rudder. “That would be great; we will be able to spend so much more time together.” Funny, how in our most cunning moments we are often at our weakest, forced onto choices like a boxer straddling the ropes. To the left, an unpitying crowd thirsty for blood, to the right, a hell bent opponent striving for his title. I guess in moments of indecision lacking the vision of better options a person just ends up picking the path that seems most interesting.

Nonfiction Story Idea

My goal with my writing is to be able to paint a scene so rich and vivid you are almost there without getting overly bored in the details. For efficiency’s sake I tap in on common human experiences so I don’t over elaborate in those areas. For example if I write, “Thom arched his neck back. Opened lungs release breath slowly pouring into the sky. Billowy wafts of vapor sail the atmosphere like a summer tuber nonchalantly floating down a lazy river. Light breaks from the sun and falls in glistening icicles plunking into the river illuminating its clear waters. The rivers ripples are piano keys and the sun’s rays are fingers landing on tiny breaking crests, orchestrating a visual melody. My sailing breath closes its eyes swaying back and forth to the tune as it climbs through the air. Pursing my lips, exhaling sharply, wind skitters away like shelves of snow scattered apart driven across solid lakes at the whims of violent breezes that crack like frozen whips bleeding cold into notches they leave in my bones.”
Hopefully the reader can relate to seeing his breath in the cold and become more comfortable with the scene I’m illustrating. I’d like to embody the moment where you see something beautiful and you are caught in that moment and make it as real in the reader’s mind as if they were actually there. Not having a story with a cadence that marches along to a steady cadence may seem counterproductive to some, but it's merely a goal of mine to be able to paint a scene with words which draws the reader into a vivid scene.
To practice for this piece I want to do an exercise that I have been thinking of for a while. I want to take an inanimate object or piece of nature and write a full one to two page description of its appearance, its effect on its surroundings and its effect on itself. The passage has to maintain interest and avoid repetition. For example I could take a piece of deck furniture in the sun and try to illustrate it in words using an entire page or more without deviating to any other of its surroundings. First I would like to see how far I can get solely describing the object’s physical characteristics. Then I would open the door to metaphors and comparisons and see how much longer I can make it.
This exercise may not sound relevant concerning story writing. If I can make a one to two page illustration of a single object and make it sound interesting enough to hold my attention, than with practice I could deduce the same page to a paragraph or even a sentence that when compiled together with other elements of the same scene would vividly emerge the reader in the scene.
I almost forgot to mention what I am going to write about. I will choose an outdoor scene. Either a hike in the fall or someplace outdoors at night in the summer. There are limitless amounts of things to describe in nature. I will try to weave in some story and inner meaning that will be far less obvious than the illustration of the scene.

Personal Memoir

The dog barks at the highway, the highway barks at itself. A cheap brittle curtain gives way to fast advancing light that breaks in needles past my face like splinters flying past the wedge. I've got to see what this dog is barking at, though I already know; a cloud, the horse, but probably the highway. Light is like a piston pressing into my orbit squeezing the retained juices into the crust, like the press awakens garlic cloves to come alive and release their dormant essence. Of course it was the highway, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt, that cloud sort of does look like a milk bone. Pins of light penetrate this cauldron of a chamber, the floor seems effervescent with dust dancing at will amongst fragmented sun trapping me like steel bars in this moment. Damn if I don't have to weigh the utility of his companionship against the annoyance of his kibble hole on a daily basis. In the cold, breath walks in front of you, reporting reminders concerning the blissful elementary nature of mortality. Emerging from my den musical mutt trots up without being called, he knows just where he's headed, to his room for a nap so I can finish mine. A wave of brilliance wider than eternity frequents down over this valley every morning to highlight it's most active and colorful features. Gripping it's audience in a slow captured state as when one is taken by electricity and can count the nano seconds while plotting release, except in this scene the captured wish for the opposite. When the road barks at itself lacking a report, humble moments like these among being missed may lead to finding myself reaching the same, though arguably less vocal, conclusion less and less often as a result of seperation from the morning maestro's all knowing lyrics; I am here, alive!