My episode of CSI, titled “Compulsion,” will air on CBS on March 10th. If I did my math correctly, that’s next week.
Oh boy!
. . . I think I just peed a little.
(sorry)

I ran in a 5K at the Rose Bowl with my entire family yesterday. Originally, it was just going to be Nolan and myself, but Anne got interested, and then Ryan decided to round it out to a full-on family event. Anne’s friend Michelle joined, too, and so did our friend Amanda. We were a full-on team!
There were thousands of people swarming around the Rose Bowl. Some of them had funny things to say.
There were about 1500 people ahead of us in the runners’ starting corral, and another 5000 or 6000 in the walker’s area. The sun felt warm on my face, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake wearing my long-sleeved shirt.
“Do I have to stay with you if you’re going too slow?” Nolan asked me.
I told him that he didn’t, and we all agreed to meet under the giant American Airlines balloon that was set up on the South Lawn when we were all finished. We stretched, did some ridiculous looking jumping around to get the blood pumping, and waited for the race to start.
The gun went off, and the kids broke away from us after about six strides.
“Wow! Look at them go!” Amanda said.
“Yeah, I suspect we’ll be catching up with them around the second mile,” I said, as we passed a troupe of Japanese Taiko drummers. For reasons that I’ll never fully understand, Taiko has always inspired me at a cellular level. It’s like those rhythms get into my nanosoul, and I started out a little fast as a result. After about 1/4 mile, my Garmin Forerunner was chirping at me that I needed to slow down, and I’d pulled far away from Amanda, Anne, and Michelle. Still no sign of Nolan and Ryan, though.
I felt pretty good, considering that I hadn’t put my shoes on in over 5 weeks, due to an incredibly annoying injury in my groin that showed up suddenly in December and sidelined me until . . . well, until yesterday. I cruised along for the first mile, smiling at people, announcing “On your left!” and “Looking great!” to the little kids who were running with their parents. I felt good, emotionally and physically. I loved it that I was out here on a Sunday morning with thousands of people, and I loved it that I was in my first race of 2005.
I sent some mental probes along my body, to see how I was doing:

• Feet: Feeling great!
• Legs: A little tight, but warming up nicely.
• Back and shoulders: 5 by 5, captain.
• Cardiovascular system: If you don’t get faster than 9 minutes / mile, we’ll be just fine, sir.
• Right groin and hip area: Houston, we have a problem.

Oh, shit.
Truth be told, I shouldn’t have run yesterday, and I may have put myself right out of the San Diego marathon this year (my quads are so sore today each step aches — but in a good way!) by running through the pain, but I desperately wanted needed to spend some time with my family. Since November (except for a brief break around the holidays), I’ve spent more time down at ACME than I’ve spent at home. When I have been home, I’ve been working so hard to meet my writing commitments, I’ve hardly had any time to just sit and visit with Anne and the kids. I’ve been redlining for weeks, and I’m creatively exhausted. Whenever I get a free moment, I want to spend it with my family, but my free moments have been few and far between.
So.
Just short of mile one, I felt the first twinge of pain in my right hip. (Hey! Maybe I’ve got a little bit of Gunslinger in me!) “Look,” I told my body, “we’re just doing 5K, and our pace is 10 minutes/mile, so relax, okay?”
“Yeah, probably not,” my body said. Pain began to radiate around my hip and up my chest. Right around 1.3 miles, I had to slow down, and at 1.5 miles the pain was so intense I had to walk.
Goddammit! For the first time since it happened two years ago, I really felt like I was in my thirties. I mean, in my bones, in my heart, and especially in my muscles.
A cheerful voice behind me called out, “On your right!” As a woman in her 60s wearing a pink “I’m a survivor” T-shirt jogged past me, putting everything into perspective.
“Doing great!” I said when she was ahead of me. She didn’t look back, but flashed an enthusiastic thumb’s up.
I walked quickly for a few minutes, and when the pain began to subside, I tried jogging lightly. I went slowly but steadily, and caught up to Ryan near mile two.
“Hey! How are you feeling?” I said.
“My knees are killing me,” he said, “and Nolan ran faster than I’ve ever seen him run. He was all the way up in the front, where there were only ten or fifteen people, when I had to walk.”
“Well, you want to run with me?” I said.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ll see you at the finish.”
“No way, kiddo. This is why I came out here today.” I thought.
I slowed and walked with him.
“What are you doing?” He said.
“I’m walking with you!” I said.
“Oh. Cool.” He said. He is so fifteen right now, I can’t tell if “cool” means “cool” or “you’re so lame, Wil,” but I was happy to walk with him.
We moved slowly through a few other walkers, and a man jogged past us, pushing his 3 or 4 year-old daughter in a jogging stroller.
“We’re doing great, daddy!” She said with a huge smile.
“We . . . sure . . . are . . . honey,” he said.
Right around mile 1.9, Amanda caught up to us.
“Hey, I know you!” Ryan said.
“How are you guys doing?” She said. She’s been training for the LA Marathon, so this is nothing to her.
“My stupid hip is giving me a really bad time, but other than that I’m fine.” I said.
Ryan told her about his knees, and we did a little speed-walking for a few minutes, until I saw the water station for mile two at the crest of a little hill.
“I’m going to run the last mile,” I said. “I’ll either see you guys at the finish, or you’ll step over my body in about 3000 feet.”
They wished me well, and I began to jog. I extended my arm — just like a real runner — as I passed through the water station. A smiling middle schooler pushed a dixie cup into my hand and said, “Great job!”
“Thank you!” I said, as I dumped the water over my face and head. I was on the Western side of the Rose Bowl now, heading South. The sun was in my face, and I began to regret wearing my long sleeved shirt.
The Rose Bowl has been involved in several landmark moments in my life, most of them when I was a teenager living in La Crescenta: When I was fourteen, I attended the Depeche Mode Concert for the Masses there, and when I was fifteen, Darin taught me how to drive a stickshift in his VW Bug . . . right in the parking lot that was now on my left. My hip was on fire, and I was beginning to feel dangerously warm, but I smiled. This is a great way to spend a Sunday morning, I thought.
When I rounded the penultimate corner in the race, I was breathing hard. The sun was beating down on me through a magnifying glass, in classic Warner Brothers carton-style, and I pushed my sleeves up as far as they could go. I sprayed the remainder of my water over my face, and immediately felt better. I turned North and checked my Forerunner: I had less than a quarter of a mile to go. Surprisingly, the pain in my hip, groin and ribs wasn’t that bad. I didn’t have the mental cycles to determine if it had just been renice-ed to 19 by /wil/bin/adrenaline so I could finish, but I I’ve learned that there are times when you just don’t ask questions. I was in the final 1000 meters! Music and cheering filled the air.
I set my eyes on the finish line, and the noise of the crowd faded away. Pretty soon, all I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears and the pounding of my feet on the pavement. With about thirty yards to go, I heard a familiar voice calling out: “Go Wil! You’re almost there! Go! Go! Go!”
I blinked my eyes and looked off to my right. There was Nolan, grinning broadly and jumping up and down. It was pure, concentrated mojo. I raised one of my hands up and made it into a fist. I pumped it in the air at him.
“Yeah! Go Wil! Go Wil!” He cheered. My heart swelled, and I finished the race running on air.
I crossed the finish line and got my time: 34 minutes. Not bad, all things considered. I my body ached, my throat was dry and my heart pounded fiercely in my chest. My 3.1 miles felt more like a marathon, which is a sad commentary on my current level of physical fitness, but I did it! I ran slower than my marathon training pace, but I did it! I wanted needed to spend some time building memories with my family, and I did it!
When I got off the course, I collapsed into the grass and caught my breath. After a few minutes, I stretched. The pain in my hip was slowly coming back (I guess The Writer got hit by the van after all), but Nolan’s cheering echoed in my head, and there wasn’t any pain at all strong enough to break through that wall of joy.
Eventually, I made my way over to our meeting place. Ten minutes or so later, Ryan and Amanda came over.
“What was your time?” I asked them.
“Thirty-six,” Ryan said. “What was yours?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Nice job,” he said. I ran this comment through my fifteen year-old to English filter, and got "Nice job [Sincere.]"
“Thank you, Ryan,” I said with a grin.
Behind us, on the other side of the giant American Airlines Balloon, about fifty people were Jazzercising. Outrageously loud europop music assaulted us, but the Jazzercisers seemed to enjoy it.
I always thought Jazzercise was an improv joke, you know? Like Bigus Dickus, but it turns out it’s a real thing, and the people doing it were having a really good time. When the music went out, (presumably because the girl leading them whooped and blew out the mixer) they kept right on going, while she said things like, “Up to the left! Up to the left! And attitude! And attitude! Left! Left! Give me attitude! Attitude!”
Anne, Michelle and Nolan walked up together.
“I learned something today,” I said.
“What’s that?” Anne said.
“Apparently Jazzercising is all about attitude,” I said.
She sat down next to me.
“How’d you do?” I asked her.
“I totally ran the whole way!” She said. She was the happiest I’ve seen her in weeks. She’s been under a lot of stress and pressure lately, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so seeing her smile and relax nearly brought tears to my eyes.
“I’m really proud of you, honey,” I said.
We talked about our times, and I turned to Nolan.
“I loved it that you were cheering for me, Nolan,” I said, “Thank you.”
“Of course,” he said. I haven’t had to use the teenager-to-English translator on him yet, even though he’ll be fourteen in August (!) and I hope I never do. (Yeah, I know, I know . . .)
“What was your time?” I said.
“Twenty-four minutes!” he said.
“Holy crap, Nolan!” I said, “That’s fast!”
“Yeah, it was fun,” he said. “I think I finished pretty close to the top.”
“Gosh, you think?” I said.
The Jazzercise music started up again.
“What the —” Anne said.
“Attitude,” I said, “plus loud europop equals Jazzercise.”
We snacked for a few more minutes, picked up our gear from the gear-check, and headed back to our car. As we crossed the street, thousands of walkers streamed across the bridge and turned into the final stretch. They were a sea of pink shirts, pink hats, pink balloons, pink flags. They were singing and shouting, and having a great time.
“Oh my god,” Anne said, “Look at all those people!”
We did.
“We are totally part of that,” I said. “I’m proud of us. All of us.”
In recent months, I’ve sort of indirectly come face to face with my own mortality, and the mortality of the people I love.
Like it or not, death is the price of admission into this life, and one day all we’ll have left are memories.
We made some wonderful memories yesterday.

I’ve got a huge trip report from the WPT Invitational slipping around in my brain, but so many incredible things happened while I was there, I’m still trying to get my head around it. I scribbled down as many notes as I could when I got home, but things keep coming back to me (huge things, like Gus hansen walking up to our table with about 200K in live chips, and spilling them all across our table and all over the floor, and talking with Greg Raymer and Andy Bloch, like we were just some guys hanging out . . . it goes on and on) that I had forgotten. It’s like my memory of the event is a room, filled with things that represent each cool thing that happened, but when I look at one of the things to remember it, a flash goes off and I can’t see anything else for a while. When the blindness fades, I see something else, or maybe a few other things, and then the flash pops again.
Something like that, anyway.
My friend Chris came down and sweated me while I played. He took copious notes and as of this writing has the first two parts of what will certainly be an incredible poker story up at his website.
From Part One, and the “I wish I’d written that!” department:

I have to paint out this scene for you… the security guard opens the rope line for you, and you walk up a large decadent staircase, past marble columns and wall mural paintings. You turn the corner and make the past few steps up, and start to see people milling about. The last few feet finally reveal people conversing and hob-nobbing, and you start to realize that you recognize *everyone*. Celebrities, poker professionals, personalities… you can’t walk 5 feet without seeing someone you’ve idolized or appreciated from afar. You step through the doors into the tournament room, where you’re allowed to walk amongst the giants of the gambling world and act for just one day like you kinda sorta deserve to be there. And nobody questions who you are or sneers at your somewhat dubious manner of earning your place… they’re just happy you’re having a good time.
I do believe that if someone had told me I was dead and had gone to heaven, I would have believed them.
I mean, Jesus is right over there.

For you non-poker weenies, Jesus is Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, 2000 WSOP Champion. When I told him how much I love watching him play cards, he said to me, “Well, I really loved watching you on Star Trek.” (insert girlish squeal here)
I’ve got a Dungeon column due today, plus an audition for an Xbox game (w00t!) so I don’t think I’ll get my version of the trip report up until the end of the weekend, at the earliest.
In my audioblog, though, I have a trio of reports. They’re mostly there to jog my memory (without the flashbulbs, I hope) but they may have some entertainment value on their own.
I made the mistake of watching the last 40 minutes or so of my Hollywood Homegame last night. I actually felt sicker watching it than I did when I played. I’ll write up what was going on in that game, too, when I get some time. Short version: I never caught anything, when I finally *did* catch something (KJ) and I was clearly beaten (AJ, A on the flop) I just couldn’t throw it away. I looked like such a fucking dipshit amateur tool moran, I deserved to lose right then and there.
At least I didn’t lose my monkey, though. No matter what, I always have my monkey.

Everyone knows that Hunter S. Thompson put a bullet through the back of his head over the weekend, and a lot of readers have wondered why I haven’t commented on his death.
I found out late Sunday night, and I didn’t have net access until late Monday afternoon. By the time I got online, anything I would have said had already been written by much better writers than myself.
I didn’t want to be one of those people who posts about an event just because everyone else is posting about it, and I didn’t want to just say, “Me too.”
But goddammit! I hate it that he’s dead. I hate it that we’ll never get to hear what he thinks about current events. He’s one of the people who made me want to be a writer, and I hate it that I will never have the opportunity to thank (or blame) him.

Last night, I sat in my kitchen and spun the dial on my shortwave radio, trying to find a numbers station (the Spooks mailing list and rec.radio.shortwave both said that E10 had been loud and clear on 6930 over the weekend and I missed it) when I came across a really cool little tune. It sounded like something I’d heard years ago from Voice of Russia, or Deutsche Welle. Though I was really hoping to hear a different tune, (like The Lincolnshire Poacher or Cherry Red), I left my radio tuned to that frequency and imagined that it originated in some obscure station on the other side of the globe . . . because that’s why I listen to SW: there’s something undeniably romantic and mysterious and wonderful about tuning in a broadcast from thousands of miles away. I don’t know many people who listen to SW, and I don’t personally know a single DXer, so I feel like I’m part of something that’s sort of below the radar (er, via the ionosphere.)
Anyway, the song continued for several minutes, and I still couldn’t figure out what it was. I don’t have a current WRTH and I didn’t want to walk all the way to my office to google the frequency, so I just listened. When the song ended, a woman’s voice came on . . . and all my romantic images were shattered. It turns out I was listening to Los Angeles wacko Dr. Gene Scott‘s SW broadcast. The woman announced that Dr. Scott had died earlier in the day, and urged listeners to get to the phones and send in their money. After a minute or so of this, the tune started up again.
Yeah. The cool music I’d imagined coming from some former Eastern Bloc country was actually coming from my own city, from a guy who was part of the background noise of my childhood.
For those of you who didn’t grow up in LA, Gene Scott was a staple of UHF television. He was a televangelist, who (in)famously rambled for up to twelve hours at a time, about all sorts of crazy shit. The camera often framed him from the chin to the top of his ever-present Indiana Jones hat, giving him this look that was equal parts creepy and kind of cool. As far as hucksters go, he’s no Robert Tilton, but for pure entertainment value, not even Wally George could beat this guy. You damn kids today probably don’t watch UHF television, but when I was a kid, my friends and I would stay up late at night and watch this guy through the static on channel 56 or 62 or whatever, and just wonder what the hell was going on.
The freaky thing is, just a few days ago I wondered aloud when Gene Scott was finally going to shuffle off this mortal coil. Which brings me to the moral of this story: my thoughts control the future, so watch ouut.
Or maybe a better moral is: even if you don’t find the numbers station you’re looking for, spinning the dial in your kitchen is a good way to spend an evening.
. . . and that’s not a euphemism.