HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (2012)

FALSE MAYAN APOCALYPSE COUNTDOWN  44 SUNDAYS LEFT.  Sun Jan 22, 2012  

Fear doesn't hit you all at once.  

Fear.  Welcome to Denver.  Read on.

You don't just wake up one morning in fetal position sobbing and twisting the sheets into little knots  as you pull the covers over your precious little head and hide from the world.

Fear creeps up on you...incrementally.  You'll never notice it.  You get caught up doing and saying the same things everyone else says and does.  Conforming to your surroundings.  Using words like "concerned about," "bothered by," "stressed out," or "worried."  

And it's hard -- not speaking in the same weak language everyone else does.  There aren't even too many surroundings out there worth confirming to and behaving like everyone else.  Ever walk into a poker room and say to yourself, "My God, I want to be just like these people.  And think like they think.  And have the same goals and lives these people have." 

The players in the room you go into are not exactly the players in the advertisements.  

Welcome to the land of Make Believe.

Now in the poker room, like in any other petri dish, there's the few who go in with goals, totally immune from the negative fog inhaled and exhaled by the rabble.  And for a little while, although I haven't been playing much at all lately , whenever I did, I felt like I was conforming to the surroundings.  Using the same language, making the same standard plays, being result-oriented instead of correct-play oriented.  Playing "concerned" or "worried."  Fear creeps into your life slowly and unnoticed...little concerns...

So sometime a few months back, my friend John O'Connor pitched out one of his favorite activities to me.  Late January.  Early February.  Skiing.  Colorado.

The first thing that came to my mind:  Oh, hell no.  

I hate the cold.  I have an unnatural fear of it.  Some people are afraid of snakes, drowning, rabid cockroaches...whatever.  I hate the cold and have a fear of dying in it.  Normal?  Nope.

Go skiing?  No way.  Skiing is an idiotic activity for x-treme sports suicidal twenty-somethings who go at it hard and elitist white collar country club snobs who slide around gingerly and delicately on the powder, trying not to break a sweat.  There's no middle ground, it's socially lame, and playing slip-and-slide in 10 degree weather sounds like an activity for penguins in an episode that would make anyone switch off Animal Planet and turn to quilting documentaries on PBS.  Skiing -- bah!  Not to mention flying.  I hate flying.

But his pitch for the trip was uniqie.  O'Connor, also known around these parts as "Mr. Intensity," explained his little annual quest this way to me.  (Intense stare) "You see, skiing is all about controlling your fear!  You get on those slopes and you start going so fast you think to yourself, there's no way I can control this.  But when you learn how to come to a stop, and control your speed, you conquer your fear.  It's all about not being scared to death of losing control."

Hmmm.  Interesting.  I think one of the reasons I HATE flying and am so uncomfortable is because I'm not in the pilot's seat.  Totally irrational.  I think we all know who should be flying the plane, and it's not me.  Totally irrational.

Drinks heavily; founded "Loogle."  Says he's not O'Connor

So I thought it through a few times.  Why not spend money you can't really afford to be spending right now on something you'd really hate doing?  Sounds perfect!  Actually, I think the real selling point was that O'Connor is a dead ringer for Rob Corddry (Lou) in Hot Tub Time Machine -- the skiing comedy about transporting back to the 80s, and I assumed I'd get some favored treatment as everyone in Colorado was sure to mistake O'Connor for "Lou." And who wouldn't want to live out that movie?

Drinks heavily, founded intensity, says he's not Rob Corddry

Unfortunately, after training hard for two months (lots of squats and cardio), Jan 28 would be met with one of the most horrible throat/ear infections I'd ever have.  Takeoff from New Orleans in a few hours.  I can barely move anything

On the airplane I noticed something:  I was so miserable with my awful cold, my flying-nerves didn't exist at all?  Why?  I was so miserable I didn't have time to imagine the plane was going to fall out of the sky every fifteen seconds.  Everything's mental; it's all in your head...and it's funny how misery made me mentally more comfortable on the flight.  If your focus is on your pain, you can't focus on irrational fears.

So we arrive in Denver and are greeted in baggage claim by the most disturbing of all murals ( see the first picture in this blog -- yes -- it actually exists there close to the baggage claim/ ticketing area).  The Denver International Airport New World Order spooky ass artwork.  For more reading about the worlds creepiest airport/ possible internment camp/ underground death camp/ survival bunker Google "Denver Airport New World Order Conspiracy."  Enjoy the show.  ***THE MORE YOU KNOW RAINBOW***

I shoulda had a V-8!

The most noticibly irritating of all the Masonic warnings is the sculpture of a gargoyle popping out of a suitcase.  The "official" explanation is that gargoyles are for "good luck" in getting your luggage.  I wonder how the TSA officers would react if I had built a Jack-In-the-Box style ten-foot tall gargoyle that would pop out of my suitcase with rapid-spring action as they inspected it?  While I'm wearing a gas mask?  I'd say that would put us all at around Terror Alert Orange.  Don't conform to your surroundings...

Every 'goyle needs a nice bag.

So we leave the airport and I can't even speak anymore...my voice is totally gone, and as far as colds go, this is one of the worst one's I've ever had.  Now lets add to that cold --  freezing temperatures, very low oxygen at that altitude, and a lack of appetite that comes from that altitude.  Pretty good ways to deal with being sick, huh?!  Oh, and no health insurance.  I rule.

We get to the room, which I don't even remember, thanks to fistfulls of Nyquil.  Then, true to Hot Tub Time Machine form, while I slept, O'Connor must have gone in the hot tub and produced a version of himself -- a miniature duplication. 

Even does that same weird finger thing...

So even though I felt like absolute death, I went to my first lesson for all the first day.  After O'Connor would tutor me on the slopes for the next couple of hours, we felt I might be able to take a "green level" (non-beginner) slope all the way down from the top of Beaver Creek Mountain.  And although I felt absolutely horrible, like my muscles couldn't even move at all with that cold, something told me to keep going.  I actually came to accept the fact that I may overexert myself into pneumonia, but just to do it anyway.  I was kind of hellbent not to give up on this trip of pain, which I had planned and worked out for for two months!

 From the top of the mountain (11,440 ft.) down to the base camp (8,100 ft.)  The entire ski trip down would take over an hour and I'd wind up with about seventeen "yard sales" -- crashes so bad the trail of your clothes and equipment behind you look like you've thrown a yard sale.

"Skriinnnnntt" goes something in my neck.  Then I hurt some weird spot in my thumb in a crash later.  Then my hamstring felt plucked apart and torn in the next unwanted high speed stop.


About this time Coach O'Connor is getting on my nerves.  He's yelling at someone who's crashed a healthy seventeen times (me) about how I'm doing things wrong.  Imagine Yoda if he were really, really pissed off at Luke Skywalker...and kind of a dick.  Looking back on it, I can't blame him.  I'm sure it was annoying as hell do deal with my insufferable, sick ass.  Plus the fact that he had to play nurse and teacher, when he should have been having fun.  As I'm stuck in the ground with skis crossed over my trachea, the rest of me bent like a pretzel.  Sick as all hell.  In the freezing cold snow.  Sore and in pain everywhere.  And he's yelling at me.

I clear my sinuses for whatever I can find.  Mmmm.  There's something about the size of a small fetus...

I take my best shot at him in pure anger and miss.  Now he's laughing hysterically like a jackal.

I am not amused.  Out of spite I make it down to the bottom without another crash.  There's a  sense of determination that comes from being really, really pissed off.  Release your anger!

The next day I'd accidentally take the wrong ski lift all by myself.  The one that went to the very top of Copper Mountain.  Only one way down.  Proud to say I made it down sicker than hell with only three crashes and with only two days of "training."

The next day, however, at Winter Mountain Park, I'd finally abused my body past the point of even being able to breathe without completely hunching over in pain coughing uncontrollably.  That was the end of skiing for me.  The twins would finish out the last day skiing really difficult runs without the rookie holding them back. And I'd finish up eating our leftover steaks in our condo having to drink our Shiraz out of water glasses.  NOT wine glasses -- water glasses!  Absolutely barbaric living conditions.

Copper Mountain.  Dork at 12,313 foot summit.  Helmet by Devo.

So in hindsight, I was wrong about skiing being an unpleasant activity.  Ok...I can't wait to go back.  Healthy!  The only thing that really annoyed me was the omnipresent folk music at every resort.  A little Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Bob Denver goes a really wrong way.  I suppose it makes the wealthy elitists who can afford to ski feel better about themselves when they listen to folk music.

And as I knew, it would be wonderful to come home out of the freezing temperatures I despise so much.  Glad I overcame that trip and conquered a new little challenge.  There was something much more horrible, unstoppable coming next week...just around the corner...


This week I'm finishing the above book by Eric Lynch, Jon "Apestyles" Van Fleet, and Jon "Pearljammer" Turner. Very in depth poker stuff. Great book given to me by my friend Eric that I'm just getting around to reading. But you will have to buy it. From this link. Apparently comes in three volumes. Ahhh...another trilogy!