Book Reviews, Harvard Weightlifting Madness, Hollywood Sadness

Books I’ve Been Reading

– The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe

This is a classic for anyone who truly wants to understand the origins of the psychedelic movement in the 1960’s. If you’ve ever done a psychedelic and been overly worried about set and setting (quiet room, trip guide, etc.) then this could be a good book to check out. To the originators of the whole movement, set and setting was far less important than partying as hard as possible at all times. The core group out of northern California was tripping 24/7 and tooling around the country in a tricked out party bus. It’s a great read. Ken Kesey is like Keith Richards, Rob Gronkowski and Jesus all wrapped into one.

– The End of All Evil, by Jeremy Locke

This is a short read about how we are all slaves to our corporate masters. Also touches on how every nation exists to exploit its citizens and can only exists as long as we all live in fear. Should this book be required reading in high school instead of garbage like The Scarlet Letter? I say yes.

– Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, by D.T. Max

A biography of one of my favorite writers, David Foster Wallace. I loved it. DFW was one of the most accomplished writers of his generation. That didn’t stop him from spending an insane amount of his free time writing letters to Jonathan Franzen, pleading for help with his procrastination problem. Makes me feel better for not blogging for months at a time!

Random Thoughts

• This was in Delta’s in flight magazine:

“Richard, the article is about how happy we all are. You’ve got to smile”

*Richard tries to smile.*

“Mr. Anderson, you’re frowning. Think about your happiest memory.”

*Richard imagines the sweet release of death*

“That’ll do.”

• I found an old training manual from my freshman year at Harvard. It’s amazing. If you read it, you’d probably think we were training for a strong man competition. If wins and losses were determined by who could scream the loudest while getting so deep into a backsquat that you can feel your discs slipping out of place, we would have been set. I mean, check out our unofficial mascot, Harvey Crim, who is featured on the first page of the manual:

Classic basketball body right there. Pretty sure Kevin Durant would be better if he looked like the physical embodiment of roid rage.

We all prayed at the alter of Harvey Crim. It’s nuts to look back and see the kinds of workouts we were doing either right before or right after a 3 hour practice. But, at least we had a manifesto on the second page of the book explaining why it was so crucial to work ourselves into oblivion day after day regardless of whether it made us better players:

That’s some intense, typo riddled craziness! Did you catch the author? 

If we ever had to see a real doctor because it felt like our workouts were making our knee tendons disintegrate, that was a disaster. Shouldn’t be done. Fight through it. Or, we were encouraged to seek out Dr. Squat instead. His prescription? Squats until you saw the white buffalo, preferably followed by exhaustion induced vomiting.

I’m all about hard work, and I have tons of fond memories of working out with my college teammates. I still maintain that we should have been a little more focused on improving our jump shots instead of our lifting numbers.

• I found a great screen shot of an email from my ICM days. It shows just how brutal it is trying to make it as an actress in Hollywood.

Not just beautiful. Not just sexy. Beautiful AND sexy. That’s the golden ticket. Go to Julliard and learn how to be super, duper hot.