3:19:08...

Getting there. Brutal course. There's more in the tank, I know. Mile 24 was a flat 6 minutes. 25 and 26 were 6:30's. I was finishing like a rabid motherfucker and some talented burner turned over his shoulder and said something exactly like, Jesus Christ dude. Felt good, felt strong. Felt like I can in the future get it under 3, then to 2:45, then who knows. I feel like I'm on the edge of picking up a sponsor and if that happens, who knows. Last night, I was watching the replay of the Ironman in Kona and the winners were all in their 30's - at their peak. Who knows.

Today, I ran with my dad and brother. There were two points in the course where there was a doubleback, where we could pass each other and slap hands and fists. It was a little cold and dark and drizzling and we were suffering for something together and potentially intangible but it obviously became something else. Seeing the look on my old man's face, twice and then at the finish - 50 some years old and conquering today. It was a life moment. I'll remember it forever - this Sunday.

So These 2 Albums...

Seattle...

Landed sometime around 6. Parents flew in sometime around noon. It was raining and a little cold. Seattle. Thanksgiving. We came from Chicago and Los Angeles. Every year, we usually find our way back together and then find this - something of a tradition for Team Smith. Indescribable John Candy. Home away from Home away from Home in the Northwest.

And Ended Here...

Osteria Mozza, somewhere in front of a Verdicchio, Pinot Nero, Montepulciano. I remember the order, but it's not important. At some point, I was driving around town, looking for a place to pop in on, somewhere to take care of me for dinner. Honestly, It's been a long day. I taught 3 classes and shot a fitness video and I'm tired -- somehow because they were pairing wines with everything I ordered. Everything. I'm wiped...so wiped, there's a lot of editing happening in this typing behind the scenes. LA in the last bits before the holidays is like this floating ghost town - so beautiful and empty, and I guess that's what brought me to my wandering, my need to find something grounding at the finest restaurant in town...somewhere where they knew my name. Sad but true. Amazing, amazing.

I Am...

Drinking whisky in a bar around Sunset, Cat Power in my ear.

Come find me.

My Continuing Education...

An Afternoon With Team Nelms...

My scabs have finally peeled away. All I have are pale spots and slashes of what recently was.

Last Saturday, me and the boys made a drive up north to Mt. Pinos. They had been talking for months about taking bikes up the mountain and then bombing down in full armor and of the dives they'd taken and how I should come and see it and feel it and take it on. When my car broke down, I bought a bike that could handle that sort of excursion and then we went. And then there was snow. I knew that no matter what was going to come was just going to come, because fear or anticipation are by the day becoming useless traits to me. I remember thinking something like, fuck we're really doing this, before we dropped into the first trail and then I remember just hanging on. It was fast and rugged and I was such a rook to these flying maniacs, but they took me through. The first run, I rode a lot of brake. The second, considerably less. There's a fucked up drop in on the second of three paths that takes a lot of faith, especially for a kid who had both never seen it and was scared to hell of heights - also the cause of the great closing wreck to the following video. I remember dropping through and then thinking I'd be alright. I took my first dive into a patch of thorn bushes and survived it and loved it and then remember thinking I'd be alright.

We rode until the sun was setting, until a rider we passed said something like, if you guys go down that trail again it's frostbite for sure...before we rode the trail again, until the sun set, until we couldn't even see the damn trail anymore. We packed up, hit some bottom of the hill pizza joint, drank some hot chocolate and drove home. At some point, I pulled a thorn from my leg that was at least a quarter inch inside. It felt fitting, and even one week away, it still feels like a damn good day.

Esh even let me pick the music...

New York, I Love You...

But Paris was better.

Ah, Berlin Through The Eyes of My JFK to Tegel Journeybeauty...

A couple weeks back, I think when I was flying home and then maybe even in recent stretches, this girl got me thinking about the psychology of attraction and why we work or why we don't...why we're inspired or why we're not. We sat next to each other on an airplane from New York to the much aforementioned German city and things happened. Most were real, some were probably invented, but things happened. We traded info and were going to paint town at some point and then it never really happened. I think she sent me an e-mail about Halloween and I sent one back and then didn't hear anything. I was out to dinner one night before I went out and I sent her a text to come meet me and didn't hear anything and something appeared in me. I say this without hubris and in full truth - I don't often get rejected. Usually it's me and apologies and some beautiful thing disclosing herself on the corner of a busy street and my uttering incapabilities and apologies over and over and over. Some of them shed a tear there or when they leave, or slam doors, or tell me to grow up and fuck myself in no particular order. I'm not making fun of any of this - I know how dire the straights of love are to navigate, and I think it's why I so, so rarely even think of fucking with that kind of force. But this girl was different - or maybe what was different about her was that it and she would have been my ideal in that moment - a foreign city and beautiful girl for 4 days and then lots of these: ???????? Maybe that's not universally appealing, and that's something I'm learning too - that everything universally appealing to me isn't necessarily universally appealing. Anyway, the point - it's obvious I'm still learning to move through it with grace...life and rejection. Looking back, I'm not sure where the attraction fell, in the girl or in her refusal of my advance. In her case, it felt like an 80/20 - because she was as curious in the first 6-8 hours as any girl I've met.

For whatever reason, I got an e-mail today...just a little while ago. Berlin feels like ages ago. It was very sweet, said whatever people say when they either misplace or bypass an e-mail. Very sweet. She sent me this video and so it's going to post. Feels very nostalgic to me and probably anyone else on the plane that day. Also very ships passing. Love it. This girl defines the tag "girl" on here. Darling. We hold that up here, always.

Trouble Coming...

To place true value upon anything but that which is internal is at best a fickle fight, and at worst absolute self-destruction. I refuse to participate. Something will be done...

Turned Out Alright, Poisoned And All...

January Jones...

Black Holes And Such...

I got off the phone very recently with a friend in something of a crisis, a writer whose movies show up on televisions and big screens all over the world. Hugely successful, hugely talented. Frustrated. He got off the phone with a girl he knows from the uber agency. Frustrated. She told him stories of writers behind some of the iconic films of the last 20 years, dudes with Academy fucking awards. Frustrated. I've been trading e-mails with a friend of mine, an auteur director and brilliant writer. He just made a movie with a lead starlet who here gets more press than any other starlet I know. Having trouble with distribution. Frustrated.

Artists frustrated with their representation. Representation frustrated. Phones aren't ringing. Nothing is happening...

I've been in something of a panic lately. Just restless I guess now that I'm back in town and settling. I'm working on plenty of things I care about - so the balance is fine. I have work, great work out there and floating through consideration, somewhere. I keep on thinking that if I came through the same way I came through but 10 years earlier, I would have a major career. I have the talent, the work ethic, the heart, the desire for growth and discovery. Things would have been different if. I'm frustrated now but I'm fine...because I can't know which path I would prefer, success or this, because this...life is pretty fine. Today, I was cleaning up my apartment and thought back to an opportunity I had to work for a showrunner/writer - a massively successful one who had 2 separate network shows pumping out and out and out. For a thousand reasons but mostly having to do with time and money and personal creative sacrifice, I declined. That was maybe 3 years ago. I remember someone told me I was an idiot, which may have been true, but at the end of the day, my decline was based on the faith I had in myself, that someday, somehow, my course would take me exactly where I want to go. And even after 5 years out here and thousands of stumbles and hundreds of rejections and a few victories, I still feel that same way. Looking back, if I would have taken the job, which was a peasant's salary at the time, I'm sure I would be writing for one of those shows or another show - approaching producer credits, moving up and up and up and making money, so much money. That's exactly how it would have gone, because I'm the groomable type and because out here, nothing fills holes of abuse endured like mentoring. Fact. We are all so abused. So fucking abused.

Instead I'm sitting in this apartment on Kings Road, rested, body rocked from the endless fights I pick with heart and muscle and I'm just thinking about it all, taking it all in. Reflection often comes November, December, I find. It's fine as long as you don't hang around in it. But I've been thinking of a lot lately, like that in 5 years, for this industry, the golden age is coming. Nothing is getting made, bought or sold. Actors are starving, artists are stumbling. The doors are tight, so fucking tight. The weak fall away and the strong adapt, because we have no choice. Get better, undeniably better. Get fucking tighter. Give more, go deeper. The old tricks don't work anymore. If you want to play, you have to fight, fight real fucking hard. Everyone. Top to bottom, front to back. And if you're not willing, then you're done and you're dead and no one cares. No one fucking cares. And if I get held out of that tiny door because someone else gave more, saw clearer, shot further, then I'm fine with that. And we'll either push and elevate or everything is going to go to shit. I believe in the former, fear the latter...sitting here on a Wednesday night trying to figure out who is going to publish my book, who is going to make my movie, who is capable as being as relentless as I am in the face of this shit, all of this shit.

Brentwood League Champions...

Sometimes it's funny to find what things occupy time and heart in life as we go and go and go. For me, for the past 6 months, one night a week goes to dodgeball. Tonight, the team I play on in Brentwood took the crown. When I was 9 years old and playing baseball, the team I was playing for, Lake Forest, went up against the unbeatable Highland Park to see who would take the North Shore crown. They were undefeated and we were just beginning to come into our own as a town youth program. I remember it was tied 1-1 at the end of the game and they brought in this pitcher who threw hard, so fucking hard that you couldn't even see the thing and I came up and hit a home run and we won the crown. That was a good day. Tonight felt like that - not because I hit a home run or anything really equivalent, but because we took the title. Seriously great. The things that occupy time and heart...

Rumors started to float around the bar that we now get to play the champion of West Hollywood (also play on a team there) on the floor of the Staples center during halftime of a Lakers game (probably Clippers though...let's be serious). We played flip cup and people started to get really drunk and I stepped back because there were times and places for that in my life. Worlds ago, years ago. I'm drying out and have no problem with that. There were plenty of champions behaving like champions without me.

Awesome.

I'm Not Sure How Today Happened...

I was just sitting in the shower, in the dark head tucked in that let the water roll over me and laughing laughing laughing, how the fuck did today happen?

Yesterday and last night after riding maybe somewhere close to 100 miles on a bike, I decided I had to get out and go to a party. This place was a palace at the top of Crescent Heights and I ate some food there and at home before I went and that was that. Around midnight, I was so exhausted I couldn't even hold a conversation...so I do what I do - slip out and away without telling anyone and start my walk home. In this case, I was coming back from the top of the mountain and something started to feel off. I was tired, so tired and I chalked it up that all I had to do was make it home and find my bed and watch some SNL and that everything would be fine. At 2 in the morning, I woke up. I was hot and dizzy and surging...surging everywhere. That first time, I threw up 4 times. I felt better, went to bed, than woke up at 3, 4, and 5, always doing the same thing - body just emptying out, chills, hallucinations, the works. It was brutal, brutal. When I was a kid, it would have made me cry my face off. Parts of me still wanted to. Every time I'd settle back into bed, feeling better, I thought that would be it, over and over and over. Terrible. And for 5 minutes every time I'd get up and walk to the bathroom, it felt like my world was ending. Throwing up is a beautiful thing if you allow. It is beautiful the way we work. I wish I could have just stood back and given my admiration and let things fall like that, but there was too much on my mind. At some point, it was 5 in the morning and I hadn't made my playlist for my 9 in the morning killer class - 50 Equinox animals looking to me to kill it, kill it, kill it. It's not such a heavy thing to think about unless you begin to fall terribly ill, and exertion becomes something so daunting. I had no idea how I was going to pull myself together. It was going to be impossible. But that wasn't all...

There was another class I had to teach at 3 in the afternoon. It was supposed to go down at the Avalon nightclub in Hollywood. I had people coming from a lot of different parts of California to fill my class - which was essentially this monster production where you had to pay good money to get in. I started to think about being up on that bike, trash can at my side, hitting a huge hill and then throwing up, throwing up, throwing up. It made me want to cry, the thought of it all, such a heavy fucking Sunday. Sundays are not meant to be so fucking heavy.

At some point, choiceless, I started to look at it in from a new angle. I sat down and forced, fucking forced myself to eat 3 bananas and choke down, fucking choke down a half gallon of water. At some point, I stopped sweating. At some point, my vision came clear and the shakes stopped. At some point, I saw it as a gift, this brilliant opportunity to look something so fucked in the face and somehow, somehow find a way to beat it, because I pick fights, because I chase battles.

I arrived at that first room at 9 and said something like this class is not supposed to happen...everything we do now is a gift. Then we slaughtered it. I blacked out at the end for a second, caught myself from falling over, but we slaughtered it.

I rode my bike across town lugging 2 backpacks full of thank you bags consisting of Kool Aid and CD's of the 3 o'clock class. Then I stood in the green room before going on and stood over the toilet and just spit and spit and thankfully nothing came out. Then we slaughtered it. I just saw clips on ABC News and it looked good. I set my recorder for Fox 11 - 10 o'clock news because I want to see how it looks - because I want to leave a mark.

I'm sitting here on my couch, hydrating, hydrating, hydrating. Football is on, Wokano is being delivered. Curb and Bored To Death are coming on in an hour. I'm trying to breathe, just breathe, not sure how today happened.

Growth.

People I Love This Weekend...

It started with Trainspotting, whenever Trainspotting came across me, but something happened when I became enraptured with the series Long Way Around and Long Way Down...where Mr. McGregor rides his motorcycle with Charlie Boorman through Eastern Europe and then later from England to the tip of South Africa. I'm certainly not that affected by celebrity - maybe I was at one point, but doing what I do, I'm just not anymore. BUT, if I did meet Ewan McGregor I feel like I'd ask him out on a man date, to buy him a beer somewhere and talk about life. Genius to me can be defined in a thousand ways - and because of that, I admire this man's genius in his sincerity, his thirst for life, his manner. Clooney too. If I had a dynamic duo of working actors today, it might be exactly these two...


...

Sometimes when I'm working, Taylor Swift's dad comes into Mozza and sits at my bar. We talk about her rise from whatever she rose from and I tell him how she made such an impression, albeit brief, on an episode of SNL last season. Now she's hosting double duty tomorrow night. Wildly, wildly talented girl. Me and him get friendly and I say things like well this is great...you come in here for lunch and I get our meeting out of the way...having already met dad in case I ever ask your daughter to marry me. He always laughs, actually laughs before leaving a huge tip. Good guy. Can't take my eyes off her. That kind a gal...

I'm Going To Tell You What You Can't Do...

After doing exactly what I did for the past 100 hours. You can't step into your home and expect that everything is going to be the way you left it, or that things will feel the way they felt - maybe ever again. I'm not saying that my life changed in the last 100 hours of my life - that would be absurd...but I'm not saying it didn't. Last night - and technically it was last night even if it felt like 50 hours ago, because I didn't sleep and gained 9 hours, Sunday night - I was walking through Amsterdam at 3 in the morning after seeing 3 seperate bars give last calls. I had another 2 hours to burn and my spine hurt and body needed rest and I was tired, so fucking tired. It was the red light district and I walked into an arcade because I was going to pay 2 Euros to see a sex show - 2 people fucking behind glass so that I could just sit down and later write about something so poetic with full authenticity. Behind me, a band of fools walked in, drunk...high, took away the flavor of my moment. In the booths, rag dispensers were drilled into the walls and I suddenly realized even I couldn't have turned what I would have seen into something romantic or like I said...poetic. Even my words. It made me want to weep. So I left and found this steps from the exit, took a picture...

Swans, beautiful swans lining the rivers amongst the savages - fucking savages. It's exactly what brought me back to Amsterdam. I could have stayed in the airport and slept and waited for my flight but instead I committed to something else - something costly and opening. And it was still beautiful, and at times ugly, but wholly inspiring - fucking swans bathing in the scum of red lights...undaunted, unaffected - and because of them so was I. I think I bought an ice cream cone, soft serve, butter pecan and walked the streets before getting on a bus that would take me all over town before dropping me at the airport at 6 in the morning. I saw the sun come up and then I don't remember much else besides landing in Los Angeles and trying to hold my hand out without watching my fingers shake.

Hello Los Angeles. I'll find you again, just be patient with me. Be accepting. That is all.

Amsterdam...

I'm drinking Le Chouffe at a bar. Bowie is playing. It's getting close to midnight and my flight doesn't leave until tomorrow morning at 1030. Trains back to the airport don't start until 430. I have some time to kill and then some. Good town. I just spent the last hour walking and walking, looking for something to eat before I stopped at a Mexican joint called Caramba. And by Mexican joint, I mean some wildly talented and successful chef crashed town and decided to open up this stomp in the middle of one of the most quaint and affluent streets of town. Incredible. I told my waiter to tell the chef his food changed my life. He came out and we had a beer and talked briefly and struggled through barriers of understanding, but seriously memorable.

It's almost midnight. I have five hours to kill. At least. At least. Smoking doesn't work on me - even in Amsterdam. I'm not going to buy mushrooms and get on a 14 hour plane ride - probably wouldn't do it anyway. I'm not going to pick up some girl so I can share her bed for a few hours - it's not really my style. Sex echoes too much in me. There are candles in front of me - candles everywhere in this part of the world. I'm still trying to reel in everything that has happened over the last few days, can't believe it's a Sunday and I'm sitting with 3 drunks in a bar in Amsterdam, on my computer, about to be told to move along.

I woke up this morning and was riding around town and I couldn't help but think that if we're open to it, absolutely open to it, the world gives us exactly what we need, not always what we want but what we need. I was thinking that a lot today - the girls, the nights, Durban. He's gone and I'll see him again soon. Soon. Right now, I'm trying to come down, trying to wrap myself around the events that occur in my world...how I brought them upon myself, how I will continue to bring them upon myself. I'm just drifting now. Just drifting. It's Sunday and I don't know anything else but that this is my life and I will continue to make it.

My Lady In Red...

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Durban...

This post has been removed by Team Burn.