An unexpected night off…

This week could be monumental for bonus money. I’m picking up an ungodly amount of time available the rest of this week because of the need in the area right now, including the couple of hours I did tonight, a couple tomorrow, a couple Friday, a monster Saturday, and about 4 hours Sunday. Unfortunately this might limit what I can do at the gym. I didn’t get home until 8:30 tonight and I was beat. I nearly got myself to change and get going but of course right after I had a shake I bailed.  I did eat healthy today, so as long as I keep that up this week, the amount of money I can make in the next few days will be worth whatever I miss at the gym.

My ABSOLUTE favorite song right now is the leaked “Circulate” off of Young Jeezy’s The Recession. It has a real “Roc Boys” feel with the horns and everything. I can’t hold still when I put this song on. It’s a flat-out hit.

New Phase of PF and other stuff

Tonight started the next phase of the Physique Formula and the workout tonight was hard. Switched from incline chest exercises to flat and decline, the back exercises switched to pullup-focused instead of row-focused, and it was heavy on the triceps. Looking at it on paper I thought it would be much harder than it was, but I still felt like vomiting afterward. I got it done. Tomorrow is legs and as usual I am not looking forward to it. I can never get myself to do the final rep that really causes growth. Burning legs are so painful.

I’m getting even more calories immediately after lifting by almost doubling the amount of Gatorade powder in the shake. It’s getting incredibly sweet, but from all I’ve read about post-workout nutrition, it’s necessary. The strawberry protein and blue Gatorade is a pretty good flavor combo.

I simplified my gym playlist today and stuck with some good rap. Tonight I bumped:

• Lil Wayne “I’m Me” and “Best Rapper Alive”
• Young Jeezy “Put On” f. Kanye West
• 50 Cent “What Up Gangsta?”
• Eminem “Lose Yourself” and “Till I Collapse”

Definitely got me up for it tonight.

By the way, I started a Twitter account for some reason.  I know about 2 or 3 people who use it, so it’s not as practical as the Facebook status updates, but whatever (another BTW, if we aren’t Facebook friends, add me already). If there is a trend, I will be roughly 6 months late to the party.

Best Rapper Alive

With the announcment of Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 album that should be out by the winter, I’ve been going through a mean HOV phase lately.  Despite what Lil Wayne claims, Jay-Z is the best rapper alive and my all-time favorite. I absolutely cannot wait for BP3, I think it’s going to be a classic. I’ve been listening to the new song “Jockin’ Jay-Z” basically on repeat. I know if it’s being produced almost entirely by Kanye this album is going to be an event.  Here’s a list of all Jay’s studio releases from best to worst:

1) The Blueprint, 2001: This is a masterpiece. This is what happens when one producer (in this case, a young Kanye West) takes over most of an album. This is one of the most cohesive albums ever made and my favorite rap album of all time.

Bangers: “Renegade” “All I Need” “The Ruler’s Back” “Jigga That N***a” “Izzo” “Girls, Girls, Girls” “Song Cry” “Takeover”

Clunkers: “The Blueprint” (though I don’t even mind that song at this point)

2) Reasonable Doubt, 1996: Another great one, though I’m not totally in love with it. It’s called one of the best debuts in rap history and it’s certainly very good, but I wouldn’t put it next to Illmatic or anything. A good 90s smooth gangster album. The album cover fits it perfectly. While I honestly think American Gangster has better songs, this gets bonus points for being the original.

Bangers: “Politics as Usual” “Brooklyn’s Finest” “Can I Live?” “Cashmere Thoughts”

Clunkers: “Ain’t No N***a”

3) American Gangster, 2007: Definitely a banger. It feels like a rejuvenated Reasonable Doubt with a lot of old soul samples by Puffy and a straight gangster theme overall (obviously made to go along with the AG movie). Despite it’s greatness I do get a little tired of it now and then because I played it out last winter.

Bangers: “Roc Boys (And The Winner Is…)” “Blue Magic” “Say Hello” “Success” “Ignorant Shit” “No Hook”

Clunkers: none, though “Sweet” is the only filler song and anybody but Bilal would have been a better hook singer on “Fallin’”

4) The Black Album, 2003: While it was his retirement album, it became the birth of the grown, modern Jay-Z. He raps on this album like he raps today, which is drastically different than early- or mid-period Shawn.  I get sick of this album at times for the same reasons as AG, but overall it’s a great one.

Bangers: “Encore” “December 4th” “What More Can I Say?” “Public Service Announcment” “99 Problems”

Clunkers: “Lucifer” That song sucks.

5) The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, 2000: Okay, here’s when it gets sticky. I hated this one when it came out. I hated the do-rag and the bragging and the pop songs like “I Just Wanna Love U.” Right before the Jay-Z/NaS fued I was completely on God Son’s side. I burned this CD in 2002 and never really listened to it until I got to grad school, and I ended up really liking it. It heavily features Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek, and for Beanie that’s a good thing. It has some great beats and there’s really only one pop song on it.

Bangers: “Dynasty Intro” “Parking Lot Pimpin’” “1-900-Hustler” “Stick 2 The Script” “Get Your Mind Right” “You, Me, Him, & Her” “This Can’t Be Life”

Clunkers: “The R.O.C.” “Holla” “Squeeze 1st” and almost anything involving Memphis Bleek

6) Volume 2: Hard Knock Life, 1998: The first Jay-Z album I bought way back when I first started listening to rap. I think it’s his biggest-selling album to date (5 milli at the time)This one has some really good songs and a little bit I don’t really care for. This is probably the end of the fast-rapping Jay era.

Bangers: “Jigga What, Jigga Who?” “Hard Knock Life” “If I Should Do” “Money Ain’t A Thang” “Coming of Age, Part 2″ “Can I Get A…”

Clunkers: “Paper Chase”

7) The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse, 2002: This is a difficult one to rate because it could have been much better. It’s not comparable to the originial Blueprint at all in style or cohesiveness. Where as the orginial is tight and compact with a common theme, this one is a double album with a lot of filler and a million different styles of music.  At 24 songs, there are at least 12-15 good- to very-good ones that would have made a great single album.  All in all, it’s a little too Neptunes-heavy for me.

Bangers: “Some People Hate” “Diamond is Forever” “Meet The Parents” “Blueprint 2″ “2 Many Hoes” “The Bounce” “The Watcher, Part 2″ “A Dream” “I Did It My Way” “Show You How” “Excuse Me Miss”

Clunkers: “Fuck All Night” “Poppin’ Tags” and a bunch of other mediocre filler tracks

8 ) Kingdom Come, 2006: Ah, the much-maligned comeback album. I think despite a major league bad songs and some middle-of-the-road stuff, there is enough on here to enjoy. People said Jay-Z was too detached from his fanbase and started rapping too rich. I actually prefer him that way and I think his rhyming is as good as ever. The problem was hype and bad beat selection. I can’t quite figure out how it turned out the way it did, but I still like it overall.

Bangers: “The Prelude” “Kingdom Come” “Show Me What You Got” “Do U Wanna Ride?” “30 Something” and I can’t decide if “Beach Chair” is great or terrible, but for now I’ll say it’s great

Clunkers: “Lost One” “Anything” “Hollywood”

9) In My Lifetime, Volume 1, 1997: I’ll be honest, this is down on the list only because I don’t know it that well. I’ve only listened to it a few times and while I don’t really like it, I haven’t really sat down with it to give it a fair chance. It feels very weird to me that this followed Reasonable Doubt. I like a lot of the songs on it, though, so maybe I’ll like it more over time.

Bangers: “Intro-A Million and One Questions-Rhyme No More” “Sunshine” “The City is Mine” “Imaginary Player”

Clunkers: “Face Off” “Real N****as” “You Must Love Me”

10) Volume 3: The Life and Times of S. Carter, 1999: This album stinks. Other than a couple good songs, it’s basically terrible and I never listen to it more than once and a while. That’s about all I have to say about it.

Bangers: “Hova Song” “Dope Man” “Watch Me” and I suppose “Big Pimpin’” even though I never really liked it

Clunkers: “Do It Again” “Things That U Do” “S. Carter”

So excluding that R. Kelly bullshit, his live album that I haven’t heard in years, any of the remix albums, and his Streets Is Watching soundtrack that I’ve never heard, that’s all of Jay’s albums from top to bottom. I clearly put way too much thought into this, but Mom brought home pizza and I skipped the gym (I’ll get workouts done Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) so I figured I’d put some time in for this.

This Is A State of Emergency…

Kanye and Jay-Z teasing a sample of a new song, “Jockin’ Jay-Z” from….wait for it….

BLUEPRINT 3!!!!!!!

This is going to be fire. I might as well hole up in a bunker until this album comes out.

Chest + Rambling

Yesterday at work actually went pretty well. I did the new evals while giving the new therapist most of the treatments for the day, which left me by myself most of the time and I got a lot done. So while not perfect, the work week is off to a good start.

Chest last night was really good, too:

inclines:

• 135 x 12 x 2 (warm-up)
• 170 x 3 x 1 (easy)
• 195 x 3 (4 with spot) x 1

declines:

• 135 x 12 x 2 (warm-up)
• 185 x 6 x 1
• 215 x 2 x 1 (actually pretty hard, but I left a couple reps in the tank)
• 230 x 3 (4 with spot) x 1 (surprised I got that much)

flat dumbbells:

• 65s x F x 5

incline Hammer Strength machine:

• 135 x 12 x 1 (warm-up)
• 185 x 7 x 1
• 185 x 6 x 1
• 185 x 5 x 1

dips:

• bodyweight x F x 3

Numbers went up on the major stuff, though I still don’t know if I should be doing more volume, which is why I threw in some more incline stuff at the end. At this rate, in a month I should be done 215 for sets of 3 on incline and 245 for sets of 3 on decline. Not quite my old form of 245 on incline and 275 on decline, but it’s getting there.

Other News and Notes:

• I’ve been coughing my lungs out since Friday despite physically feeling better from the weekend. I don’t know what this is but it doesn’t feel like a regular cold. A lot of people at work have been sick. The cough is brutal.

• Jaylynn called in sick Sunday, so later on that day we saw Dark Knight. Definitely a very good (not sure I want to call it ‘great’) movie and Heath Ledger was awesome. The more time that passes from seeing it, the more amazing his performance was. All I can talk about right now is Batman and Batman villains. I sound like a child. “…and Batman did this and this and this, and he can do this and this, and he has the Batcycle which does this and this…” Molly and I have been hypothesizing and reading rumors about the next movie in the series and who could be the villain. The two I’ve read so far are Daniel Day Lewis as The Riddler (not happening) and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin (brilliant!). Despite that it’s all I want to talk about, I still think I’m in the camp of the movie almost living up to the hype.

• Some trailers I’m excited for: Watchmen and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Definitely in a sci-fi mode.

• I don’t think I’m going to go into work till 9:30 today when I have a patient scheduled. I just want to relax for a bit.

• Listening to so much Lil Wayne recently, both Carter II and Carter III. It took me a while to buy him as a great rapper, especially since my only real exposure to him since “Tha Block is Hot” and “Get Off The Corner” were his garbage verses on Kanye’s “Barry Bonds” and Jay-Z’s “Hello Brooklyn 2.0.” However in anticipation for my New Orleans trip I figured I’d get reacquainted with Lilweezyana, and man is he good. I still don’t quite get why Time is writing features about him and I don’t know how he sold 1.1 million albums in a week, but I’m now in the Pro-Weezy community.

• I’m about 50 pages away from finishing Jared Diamond’s Collapse, a book I’ve spent the better part of a month trying to get through. It’s about this close to reading a textbook, but it’s still pretty interesting. It makes me feel smart.

So that’s about it in my recent world. As you can see, nothing earth-shattering. Back and a little biceps tonight.

Two big workouts brought to you by Layne Staley

Got two big workouts in Thursday night and Saturday morning.  Thursday was the new usual shoulders/arms routine and Saturday was chest/back at Boston Sports Club in Natick with Jaylynn and both went really well.  I didn’t do quite as much volume on the Thursday workout as I did last week, but I definitely pushed myself harder.  Saturday I got a day pass (for $15, which is a rip off, though we didn’t have to pay this time because we had no cash and they wouldn’t take a card so they let me in free) and did a few good exercises for chest and back (flat dumbbell bench, decline hammer strength machine, and a couple different kinds of cable crossovers for chest, then wide-grip cable rows and close-grip pulldowns for back, plus some lower back extensions and some stretching). I would love for Saturdays to be a new routine for us, though obviously it won’t be able to happen every week.  I think I’ll have recovered enough by tomorrow morning to do a nice upper body workout.

Like NIN a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been listening to Alice in Chains almost exclusively (much to Jaylynn’s chagrin) since going through all my 90s Alt Rock CDs last week. AIC was the band that I loved with a passion and then forgot about once I hit college, instead opting for their offspring Staind and Godsmack.  I always put way too much thought into ranking my all-time favorite bands, but I’d be hard pressed to keep these guys out of my Top 5, and are probably #2 behind Coheed & Cambria.  As metal as they were, the best stuff was all the eerie acoustics on Jar of Flies and Sap combined with the grinding of the self-titled three-legged dog album.  Layne Staley sounded like a ghost even when he was alive, and songs like “Nutshell,” “Sludge Factory,” and “Get Born Again” are haunting.  The hard stuff is great for the gym and I go nuts when “Would?” comes up on shuffle, but “Rotten Apple” is just as good when it comes up on the ride home.

Leg Day

Legs this morning:

-Deadlifts: 4 sets x 5 reps

-Squats (machine): 4 sets x 5 reps

-Romanian Deadlifts: 4 sets x 5 reps

-Calf Raises: 3 tri-sets of toes in-out-straight x 12 reps

*plus 30-minute walk around the neighborhood when I woke up

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I know I reviewed the NIN album last week, but I can’t emphasize how compelled I am to listen to it.  It’s the first thing I think about listening to when I grab my iPod, and I still think Reznor completely mailed it in.  I am mesmerized.

The Slip

Trent Reznor is giving away Nine Inch Nails’ new album The Slip at their website for free.  I downloaded it last week and haven’t really listened to much else since.  It sounds like the kind of album that he would give away for free, as it’s basically a carbon copy of Year Zero that sounds like it was made with fewer computers (probably just a Casio keyboard, fuzzbox, and ProTools) and everything from the beats to the artwork to the album title feels like it took about 5 minutes to come up with (sort of the Amnesiac to Year Zero’’s Kid A) I definitely wouldn’t call it a great album or even a very good one, but I can’t stop listening to it for some reason. I get up at 5:30, come down to the computer, and put it on. It’s hypnotic to listen to in the morning.

The best songs are “Discipline,” “1,000,000,” and “Letting You.”

Sleep Through The Static

OKAY, peeps, we are back.

Back in the gym, back in the mindset…at least for now. I know I’ve said that about 5 times during the past few months.

Had a great weekend celebrating Jaylynn’s graduation from MGHIHP with her Doctorate of Physical Therapy (she’s so much smarter than me it’s not even funny).  Went out to eat three separate times (all on her parents’ dime, too) to the Lotus Blossom for Chinese, Bullfinch’s for Fillet Mignon, and Gibbett Hill Grill for Prime Rib.  Quite the experience.  Not sure how we’ll go back to The 99 and Papa Ginos after all that, but whatever.

My gym drought is over. I went tonight and did a few 5×5s of upper body stuff:

-Incline Dumbell Bench 5×5

-Cable Rows 5×5

-Barbell Push Press 5×5

-Dumbbell Shrugs 5×5

Felt pretty good.  I’ve decided to screw a program for right now and just go to the gym and have fun.  Granted it’s hard to have fun when you don’t know anybody at the damn place and loathe its clientele, but I screwed around and did some stuff I wanted to do to feel bigger again.  The only semblance of routine I’m going to have right now is doing an upper/lower split so I’ll go at least twice a week and lift pretty heavy, sticking to my 5×5 sets.  I’ll do supersets if the equipment is available but otherwise I’m not going to kill myself over it. I need to start going for walks in the morning again, too, so I’ll do one of those tomorrow.  I’m off from work tomorrow (at least for going to Bourne, I have to drive to Andover for another mentor meeting), so I’ll do a lower-body session after I get back from that.

Otherwise things are good.  Look for more workout-related updates.

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Got Jack Johnson’s new album Sleep Through The Static and it’s not bad.  Other than two or three songs, it hasn’t really grabbed me, but certainly very pleasant to listen to.  I think this album came out in February, even though it should be illegal to listen to Jack Johnson albums between September and April.  It is strictly summer music.  If I were you I would check out “Go On,” “Angel,” and “Adrift.”

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach

I haven’t been writing very much in this blog lately.  It’s partly broken-laptop-related, it’s partly writing-about-the-same-thing-all-the-time-related, but in any case, not much to write about.

I’m down to 191 pounds, even though I haven’t been working out very hard.  I went to the gym three times last week but haven’t been able to get there this round.  For whatever reason I’ve had the hardest time waking up lately, even though I’m getting 8-9 hours of sleep a night.  I struggled with this when I started work.  My diet has by and large been pretty good, I’m back to eating baked chicken breast every night, so that’s something filling with a ton of protein.  Not going to get to 185 in two weeks for May 1, though maybe by Memorial Day.

I’m somewhat bothered by the fact that in my gut (though there’s much less of one now), I know I’ll never be fully engulfed in fitness again.  I’ve got a decent balance where I eat healthy most of the time, I work out hard 2-3 times a week, I stay active at work, and I enjoy myself on the weekends.   As I get older that might be all I’ll be interested in doing.

Work has been pretty good for the most part.  The caseload has been so slow for all of us in rehab, I’m seeing about 3-4 hours worth of patients per day, just because there is no demand for therapy right now.  I’ve been splitting up some of my days by going to the other homes in the area.  The two in Falmouth called the Royals are palaces.  I drove home today listening to “Boys of Summer” by The Ataris on repeat, and I’m really looking forward to picking up more hours in Falmouth.  The Cape is just a beautiful, beautiful place.