"Borat": not funny. "Borat" in the wood chipper: also not funny.

The proud Kazakh people appear to be up in arms about "Borat."

I don't know ... I suppose if I were a Kazakh, or of Kazakh heritage, I'd be upset too ... but not because of being offended about the movie's slurs, but rather that the movie is an unfunny piece of crap.

I swear, if you showed a continuous loop (as all loops are, I guess) of the "Borat" trailer and a random sampling of ads for that CBS turdfest "The New Adventures of Old Christine," you would end up with a night devoid of laughter. "Christine" is in its second season now, and they flog the show to death during football telecasts on CBS - and I've not laughed once when the ads run. You'd think that there would eventually be something shown on the ad that would tickle, or at least charm, my funny bone. Hell, even a blind dog finds the hole every once in a while, right?

This is no time to get excited about your sports teams!

IU’s upset of Iowa this past Saturday makes those losses to Connecticut and Southern Illinois - Southern Illinois! - loom a lot larger, doesn’t it? Consider: if IU had had its crap together in those two gimmie games, they’d now be sitting at 6-1 – bowl-eligible for the first time since the Trent Green days.

Regardless, the 4-3 Hoosiers are still, phenomenally enough, listed in ESPN.com’s bowl projections for the first time. College football guru Ivan Maisel has the Hoosiers slated for the Motor City Bowl for a rematch with Central Michigan, while Mark Schlabach projects IU for the Insight Bowl against Oklahoma State.

You could knock me over with a feather right now. I suppose Maisel and Schlabach have started drinking the Kool-Aid that IU coach Terry Hoeppner is selling. (You know something? So am I.)

Foxsports.com is a little more realistic, I’m afraid. The Motor City Bowl pits a MAC squad against the No. 7 Big Ten team – and foxsports.com projects a Central Michigan-Wyoming matchup, as they don’t foresee a seventh Big Ten team (ideally Indiana) to be eligible.

What looms next for the Hoosiers? In spite of the fact that Coach Hep will have them taking the field believing they can win, they'll take their beating against top-ranked Ohio State this weekend. (Ohio State is favored by 31.) Afterwards, there's a schizophrenic Michigan State team that, depending on which Spartan squad shows up, is very beatable, followed by another winnable game against lackluster Minnesota. Another "L" will go on their record against Michigan, and then the Hoosiers close against a Purdue team that hasn't set the world on fire this year.

It's conceivable that IU could go into the season-ender against Purdue at 5-6, needing a W for a bowl berth, or even at 6-5, already bowl-eligible. Hard to imagine after they barely showed up in those two early-season losses to UConn and Southern Illinois (let me reiterate: Southern Illinois!). Still, knowing IU's tendency to lean toward "suck" deflates any of my expectations that were built up after the Iowa win. I'll get excited when I see it.

****

My beloved St. Louis Cardinals gave me a childhood's worth of thrills, but managed only a world title in 1982, followed by heartbreak in 1985 and 1987. They limped home with an 83-79 record this year, and were expected to be put away handily by San Diego in the first round.

Yet, here on October 18, they're one win from the World Series. (Where, if they make it, they will promptly get trounced by Detroit.)

I'll get excited when I see it - I still foresee the ass falling out of their season over the next two nights, and I also expect their bullpen to turn into a pumpkin over same. But I'd love to be wrong.

****

More self-indulgence until you are hammered into submission …

Every now and again (and this is one of the "nows"), I feel this pang in my gut because of all of the people I've screwed over in my life. I suppose that "screwed over" is the improper choice of words. Perhaps "tossed aside" or "grew apart from" is the more accurate terminology.

Thanks in part to my recent bad poetry postings and other minutiae that I won't bog you down in, I got to thinking today about friends past and friends lost.

I determined that, after all these years, I have approximately three friends – one's the Captain, as you might have guessed, one's in Iraq and one's a girl. Bubbling just below that top level is a category of acquaintances that I have – folks I'd definitely have multiple beers with if the opportunity arose (hi Jason!), and I'd like to think they'd be happy to do the same with me, but I've not exactly been busting my ass to make the opportunity arise.

Come to think of it, almost every relationship I've ever had – family, friends, romantic – has been tainted or, in some cases, destroyed by my abject laziness (I've detailed this previously). In the current Great Household Liquidation that has pulled me away from this blog and caused me to slip into "The Way We Was" mode, I found among the detritus of my past a birthday card I got for my 18th birthday from my now-former-stepdad. It was one of those cards that says how much you mean as a son to the sender. He hand-wrote on the inside, "You do mean as much to me as any son could be. Love and best wishes, John."

God.

If I hadn't had the dad I had – and my father is as close to Superman as I could ever have asked for in my life - John would have definitely been my second choice. He was as decent to me as he didn't have to be, to borrow a Brad Paisley lyric.

Of course, John and my mom divorced around the time that that card was sent to me, maybe even before that. (Sad that I can't even recall it, but my head was squarely in my ass at that point in my life.) And, of course, how often have I spoken with him in the last 14 years or so? Zero.

"But the phone and the mail service works both ways, Brandon. You can't blame yourself for your relationship with your former stepdad disintegrating like that."

To which I say, "Eat me." More politely, I can blame myself, and I do.

I really need to look him up.

Here’s what kind of day it is.

My wife is in Chicago again this week. (Hopefully no health crises for her husband while she’s gone, like last time.)

And the only thing left in the Coke machine at work is Vault. Fucking Vault. “Drinks like a soda, kicks like a horse’s ass!” Or something. It’s awful, regardless of how it kicks. Why don’t they just put skunk urine in a can and sell it? (Oh, wait, they already do – it’s called Red Bull.)

Ugh. It’s got “long day” written all over it.

*****

I don’t think I want to live in Barrow, Alaska anymore. Still sounds like a great place to visit, though.

*****

Dumb things to do on your next officially sanctioned holiday (Veteran’s Day, for many of you; Thanksgiving for others):

71. Find songs that have the word “cocaine” in them. Replace with the word “propane.”

Aside from rechristening Eric Clapton’s classic song as “Propane,” here are other goodies that you can come up with:

“Be damned if I ever do anymore of that propane.” – Hank Williams Jr., “O.D’d in Denver”

“We reached that level of fame where people started dishing out free propane.” - John Walsh and the Sinkholes, “Better Off Dead”

“My only friends are these vitamins and propane.” - John Walsh and the Sinkholes, “Do You Wanna Save The World?”

(It’s also funny on that last one if, instead of propane being the substitute, you used the name of legendary New York industrial band Pro-Pain. It’s not funny for the other ones, though.)

"But I'll tell you this. I have more strength in this hand than you 've got in both your hands. You won't believe it. Lemme show you something. Turn that recorder off. Gimme your arm a minute. [Walther proceeds to squeeze the interviewer's arm with his gloved hand.] That's without doing it hard. I've got unreal strength. 'Cause I do chin-ups and all that."

--Salt Walther, in 1977's "The Boys of Indy" by Phil Berger and Larry Bortstein

I’m sorry; your Rollins test has come back positive. (Or: I’ve got diamonds in my eyes!)

I’m not one to belittle anyone’s rage or otherwise make light of the awful things that one might have gone through when he/she was a kid ……

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m usually at the head of the line when it comes to poking fun at people and their “unresolved issues from their youth.” Don’t get me wrong. There are damaging things that happen to kids, both today and in the past. But just the same, there is a line that is often blurred, somewhere between “my dad/priest/neighbor/uncle/teacher beat/molested me” and “my parents didn’t do anything to boost my self-esteem.” The former group has my utmost sympathy as long as they don’t perpetuate their pain by damaging other kids; it’s the latter "self-esteem" group who are fair – and easy – targets.

Anyway.

My not-iPod kicked up a series of songs that included a Dwight Yoakam song, two Mudhoney tunes, a Neko Case song … and the apocalyptic closer* from Rollins Band’s landmark early ‘90s album The End of Silence. This very intense song is called “Just Like You,” and while it fits in with the overall theme and timbre of the album … as a standalone song, in the midst of Yoakam-Mudhoney-Mudhoney-Case, it’s hilarious.

Rollins is pretty full of rage on the whole album - I often joke that The End of Silence was the first album to be sung in all caps - and he's got some really great songs on it. "Low Self Opinion," for instance, is still as strong today as it was 13 years ago, and I still occasionally use it to kickstart my day.

"Just Like You" clocks in at around 11 minutes, a train-wreck of a song that serves as the perfect closer to the album. It's as cathartic for the listener as it was for Rollins, a song that detailed his trials and tribulations with his father, who may or may not have done unspeakable things to him. The chorus, if you can call it that, features Rollins howling "RAGE!" repeatedly.

However, not unlike the infamous "sex mixtape" I made some years ago that included Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks," it ... didn't necessarily fit in that sequence of songs. So "Just Like You" became, at that time, the funniest song ever. Not funny because of what happened to Rollins, but funny because there is a man in my stereo screaming "RAGE!" over and over.

* - "... the hell? Apocalyptic closer?" you might ask. This was a phrase used in several of the heavy-metal magazines that I read at the dawn of the '90s, used to describe a last song on an album that is particularly intense and terrifying and awesome. First used, I believe, to describe the album-ender on Megadeth's epic Rust in Peace album. Occasionally modified to "epileptic closer," when the last song on an album is so bad that it gives you the twitches.

Got the runs. No, not that kind.

If your mind is strong enough or weak enough, you can talk yourself into believing the most asinine shit.

My last serious athletic endeavor, other than the gymnastics required to help conceive our son, was some 13 years ago, and the last time I was really and truly in shape was probably 15 years ago. Then, I was a sophomore in high school, just coming off a season in which I was Most Valuable Runner for my high school’s cross-country team. That make-or-break winter – the winter that would determine whether I would continue my improvement and carry out my vow to my high school principal that he’d soon see my name on the all-conference team – I got my driver’s license and just stopped running.

By the time track season rolled around that spring, a season in which there were high expectations on me to carry our small distance-running corps, I was a lost cause. All of the previous two years’ work, in which I got my 5K time down from the 26s to the 18s, was for naught. The disappointment was crushing - crushing enough that I didn’t go out for cross-country or track my last two years of high school. Even at my small school, I didn’t feel like I belonged on either team.

Running was no longer an option as a result; I played baseball my last two years of high school, and that was the last time I had done anything even remotely resembling “exercise” on a regular basis.

Fast-forward to today.

You know about my recent cardiac scare, and the relief that ensued when I found out that I was in better shape than I feared. I’ve smoked a lot of cigarettes, drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of White Castle and watched a lot of TV the last 15 years. To learn that there were no arterial blockages or cardiac anomalies in spite of my sedentary lifestyle was like a last-minute death row reprieve.

And it’s not just a selfish concern about my health, either. It’s about my son growing up with a father, and my wife having someone around to keep her honest the next 50 years. It’s about not breaking my family’s heart by going to an early grave thanks to dumb lifestyle choices. It’s about sticking around to watch my kid beat up the Captain’s kid.

(Editor’s note – Before starting the next paragraph, Mr. Tamble was hit by a bus and, as he gimped to safety, was tragically obliterated by a wayward meteor. No other injuries were reported.)

Oh, I jest. Just wanted to illustrate what a crapshoot life can be, and how health zealots can often miss the big picture – that it doesn’t matter how clean you live your life, how much healthy food and drink you put into your system, how few cigarettes you smoke – if your number comes up, it comes up. I’m not saying that there are not risk factors that may or may not weigh into the final day of your life – I’m just saying that living right and staying off the crack doesn’t guarantee you’ll live to be the old person in one of those “five generations” pictures.

Anyway, my “new lease on life,” as it were, compelled me to purchase a cheap pair of running shoes that weekend.

Remember what I said in the opening paragraph about having a strong enough or weak enough mind can make you susceptible to talking yourself into the stupidest shit?

Before hitting the pavement for the first time in over a decade, I harbored no illusions about getting back to an 18-minute 5K – those days went out the window with my driver’s license vision test. I did, however, have a vision of running my way to good health, and it was that impetus that propelled one foot in front of the other in a faster-than-walking fashion on my country road last Sunday. “I’m going to run out to the end of my road and then turn around and run back, and that’ll be about eight-tenths of a mile, and that’ll be a great start!” I said to no one in particular.

Oh, how the running gods chortled. “You are retarded,” they said.

I felt great in the first 50 yards or so. “Hey, this isn’t too bad,” I thought. “I could do this!”

And, if I had stopped there, turned around and ran back to the house, I would have felt like a champion. A slow champion, like Bill Elliott these days, but a champion regardless.

Alas, I didn't stop. I continued running, well past that 50-yard mark.

At roughly a quarter-mile (well short of my original "end of my road" goal), I turned around and started back to the house. "Hey, I can still get a half-mile in," my last sentient thought for the next few hours went.

At 3/8 of a mile, my legs gave out. I walked a short distance before turning it back on the last 150 yards. And when I say "turned it on," I mean "gimped home like those guys who are still trying to finish the Boston Marathon 18 hours after the race is over."

In hindsight, it's a bad idea to start a full-on running program after taking 15 years off. Regardless, I'm going to modify my plan and ease back into it - total mileage for the week: 1 - stop smoking and perhaps attain all of those dreams I mentioned earlier.

Regardless, this scare has brought about what's going to be a pretty major sea change in my life.

There are things that I've taken for granted that I don't want to take for granted anymore, and I've already detailed those things here even before September 21.

I want to spend more time outside with the boy and less time inside trying to hear the TV over his requests for me to come play with him.

I want to spend less time looking at porn and more time looking at my wife. (Oh, I can do both.)

And if I never run a sub-20 5K, or even make it to where I can run a 5K without stopping to suck air, that's OK. I still feel like I'm already a hell of a sight healthier - and maybe even more exercise tolerant! - than I was when I transported myself to the emergency room two weeks ago. And hopefully I'll be around to pester my wife and keep my son out of the gutter for many years to come.

"So, is this where it all ends???"

My recent obsession with my own mortality culminated in a day like two Thursdays ago.

That day started like any other day and quickly went down the drain in short order. Within about 5 minutes of waking up, I felt a pain in my chest. It wasn't a sharp pain - more of a dull, consistent ache - but something wasn't right. Naturally, I panicked and started getting somewhat short of breath as a result.

I tried to will the pain away and finished getting ready for work, but by the time I left the house almost an hour later, the pain was still there. I had taken my blood pressure twice in the interim - a little high, but likely due to my panic. The pain was definitely a distraction, but I decided to suck it up and make the trip to work.

On the way to work, I called Mrs. Tamble, who was in Chicago that week (sigh). Get thee to the doctor post-haste, she sort of said.

Me: "blah blah money, blah blah I'm sure it's nothing, blah blah it'll pass, etc."

Her: "Go now!"

Me: "K."

I turned my vehicle around and headed to the emergency room.

****

Driving in silence during the bulk of the near-30-mile trip and still in a panic, my mind kept reeling over the likelihoods of what I would hear once there. I know my weaknesses - poor diet, smoker, no exercise, mildly obese - and figured that the phrase "walking time bomb" would figure heavily into the day's events. I also imagined the phrase "90% blockage" and the question, "Are you familiar with the procedures for getting on a waiting list for a new heart?" would come into play.

Listen. I'm not Mr. Worst-Case Scenario or anything like that. I am, however, a generally happy-go-lucky person, probably to a fault - I don't get terribly upset about anything anymore, and probably haven't reacted negatively to things that I should be hopping mad, or at the very least, mildly concerned about for a good while now.

Which made my decision to go to the emergency room even the more harrowing - if I had an accident with a chainsaw where I would leave my arm hanging by a thread, I'd still probably rationalize not going to the doctor, since it was still hanging on by a corpuscle or a tendon or something. Long story short, I must be pretty concerned if I were giving in and going to a doctor.

I didn't have my radio on or didn't even bother to hook up my not-iPod to the stereo, but in my mind's ear, I kept on hearing The Postal Service song that goes "Would someone please call a surgeon who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart?"

God. I don't want to go to the grave thinking of The Postal Service, I thought to myself. Even "Freebird" would have been more useful here. I don't care how trite or cliched it would have been.

*****

Once at the hospital, I erroneously parked on the far side of the parking lot and walked about an eighth of a mile to the emergency entrance.

"Yes, Mr. Tamble, what can we do for you today?" the matronly woman at the desk asked.

"Chest pain."

She called a doctor, or a reasonable facsimile, who pulled me into one of the triage rooms. We went over my vitals and the particulars of why I was there (chest pain started around 5:45, a dull ache, a 3 or a 4 on the pain scale, and I take Singulair), and I was whisked to Exam Room 3.

*****

My family was likely also in a panic by this point, and I couldn't pull a signal on my cell phone in the exam room to let them know I was still alive and not yet having my chest sliced open to repair any cardiopulmonary anomalies. I had called my parents and my wife on the way to the hospital, who all cried or at least seemed concerned. I told them not to get upset or otherwise panicked, but no one ever listens to me. Both parents asked if I needed them to come down to the hospital, and I vehemently rejected any notion of them dropping what they were doing to come be with me.

I meant it, too. I've made it a habit to not go out of my way for just about anyone anymore, and I fully expect the same when the shoe is on the other foot.

*****

The next hour was a blur. I was hooked up to an EKG machine, a nurse came in and pulled about a gallon of blood out of my arm ("Ahhhh, you're a bleeder!" she said happily), and a doctor who looked like he'd been in his share of bar fights came in to talk to me. We started conversing about the particulars of the morning (chest pain started around 5:45, a dull ache, a 3 or a 4 on the pain scale, and I take Singulair). He told me that it was unlikely I was having a heart attack, since it'd been about 3 hours since the pain started by that point, and it wasn't radiating into my arms or anything ominous like that. Doc put a stethoscope on my chest and back, gave my thump-thump a listen, and declared, "Your heart and lungs sound great." (!) He charted a course for my day, most of which involved the "low-risk cardiac track" and left me to continue the interminable wait.

*****

Another few minutes passed when a knock came at the door. One of the attendants opened it up and said, "Mr. Tamble, your mother is here."

The shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhit, while kept solely in my inner dialogue in its initial moments, became audible seconds later.

I really didn't want anyone to make a fuss about it. But she was there, and she wasn't going anywhere. I begged and pleaded for her to go back to work. She refused.

*****

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Barroom Brawler came back in. He reiterated his initial diagnosis after reviewing my EKG, and sent me to X-Ray for ... well, you guessed it. The X-ray tech started talking to me about the events of the morning (chest pain started around 5:45, a dull ache, a 3 or a 4 on the pain scale, and I take Singulair), took a couple of snapshots of my innards and sent me back to my exam room.

*****

A short while later, a different heart doctor came in, dressed for golf, it appeared. He was apparently a big deal. We talked for a little while (chest pain started around 5:45, a dull ache, a 3 or a 4 on the pain scale, and I take Singulair), and he confirmed Dr. Barroom Brawler's diagnosis that I was not dying right there in front of their eyes. I made the mistake of asking where exactly in the chest the heart was - whether it was right underneath the skin or whether it was deeper - because I honestly didn't know. Apparently, Dr. Double-Bogey heard, "Where is my heart?" because he answered, "In the middle of your chest." (Great, I thought. This doctor must think I'm a raisin-brain.) I rephrased my question and got the answer I was looking for, because I honestly didn't know.

I joked with my mom thereafter about it. I started scratching my shoulder and saying, "Look - I'm scratching my butt because I don't know where it is!" Not exactly gallows humor, but I was headed there.

*****

Around 11, a toothy nurse appeared at the door of the exam room with a wheelchair in tow, ready to roll me to the cardiac ward for my stress test, which would be the last test ran on me that day if it went well. Upon arrival in the room, the tech asked me to take off my shirt, and Toothy began shaving various spots on my chest so as to facilitate the gluing of electrodes. I would have preferred that she went for the whole wax, but I wasn't in a position to argue. While they were being attached to my chest, the tech asked me about the events of the day (chest pain started around 5:45, a dull ache, a 3 or a 4 on the pain scale, and I take Singulair).

Dr. Divot arrived shortly thereafter, and I got on the treadmill. My goal was to maintain a rate of 160 bpm, and the machine would increase in speed and angle at various intervals, while the monitor in front of me measured my vitals. After the third increase, the task at hand began to get more laborious, and I really struggled to keep up. (Feel the burn!) Gulping as much air as my lungs would allow, I finally got Dr. 3-Iron to take pity on me and shut the machine off. I staggered back to the exam table and landed on my butt. (Or my shoulder; take your pick.)

*****

"Everything looks great," Dr. 3-Putt told me. "The only thing I would point out is that you have poor exercise tolerance."

(This is not something I didn't already know.)

"A man your age should be able to last at least 10 minutes on the treadmill."

"I wasn't that far off, was I?" I asked hopefully.

"You barely made it to 5."

Oh.

*****

There were various names given to the chest pain I had (and still have today) - "atypical chest pain," "chest wall syndrome." The general consensus was that I had sneezed something out of whack in my chest. Not unlikely, really. I have these awful sneezing fits every so often, and as the story goes, it's possible that one of my rib joints got knocked off-kilter where it attaches to my sternum, right in front of my heart. They told me to take Tylenol or Advil for the pain, and stop smoking.

Oh, and wear my seat belt when I leave the emergency room.

Thanks.

*****

There's a Part II to this story, but I wanted to share Part I with you to lay the groundwork as to why I've been absent from this blog for the last couple of weeks. More later.