Resolution 9 - Clint Eastwood Quest - 40% Complete

I have always been aware of the legendary Dirty Harry line of films and their classic one-liners but have never seen one. That changed today as the original Dirty Harry movie is the next part of the 10 film Clint Eastwood collection I will be covering today. It is also the only Dirty Harry movie that is part of the collection.

The original Dirty Harry came out in 1971 and features Clint Eastwood as inspector Harry Callahan. Early in the film Callahan is assigned a new partner Chico Gonzalez, played by Reni Santoni and the two continuously have exchanges throughout the film as to why his nickname is "Dirty Harry." Essentially it all boils down to that Callahan is a badass that plays by his own rules to get the job done, no matter what side of the law it falls on.

On my last Eastwood blog covering Kelly's Heroes, I kept comparing that film to my favorite crime drama series, The Shield, and I will do the same here for Dirty Harry. I can easily see how the Harry Callahan character is the inspiration for Michael Chiklis's Vic Mackey character on The Shield. Callahan is not afraid to bend the law and rough up suspects to get the intel he desires as well as uttering a few stereotypical awesome one liners along the way. Vic Mackey is the exact same way, except a little more modernized and believable with slightly less hokey one-liners, and has a bit more of a sinister side to him. I have no idea if Callahan's character goes down that path in the later Dirty Harry films, but they certainly lay down the foundation for it with this film.

It was great to finally see some of the classic scenes this film is notorious for. I am of course referring to the "Do you feel lucky" quote early on in the movie where Callahan breaks up a bank robbery in the midst of eating a hot dog. Even after 40 years, that scene holds up and Eastwood pulls it off to perfection. There are also several other classic one-liner delivered throughout, but I do not want to give them all away in case you have yet to see this.

Chico and Harry spend the film chasing down the dreaded "Scorpio Killer" played by Andrew Robinson. This androgynous looking fellow is the perfect foil for these two as he is absolutely bonkers and I loved watching the wild goose chase he sends Callahan on tracking him down in his latest crimes throughout the film. When watching the behind-the-scenes feature for this afterwards, Robinson was not so sure about why he was chosen to be the antagonist until the director told him he wanted someone with the face of a choir boy.

Another thing I got out of watching the extras was that Dirty Harry was the launch pad of Clint Eastwood into Hollywood superstardom. With this film being packed with intriguing characters and well delivered one-liners and all over the place action, I can see why it became a successful vehicle for the career of Eastwood. I do not think I will track down the rest of the Eastwood films as the extras probably spoiled me a little too much and were packed with plenty of clips from the other Dirty Harry movies, but much like the other films I have covered in this collection, this one is a definite must see. It is not available on Netflix streaming, but they do have the disc on hand, or if you want to follow along with me, here is a Amazon link to the collection I am watching off of.

Past Eastwood Collection Blogs

Kelly's Heroes
Where Eagles Dare
Gran Torino

Resolution 1 - Run Half Marathon - Complete!!!

Fargo Marathon weekend is over. As I stated on Facebook minutes after finishing the race, "I rocked the half, but it also rocked me."

I have no idea where to begin so let's start at the beginning of the weekend when I arrived in Fargo and checked in at Motel 6 around 3pm. I felt pretty good and was incredibly stoked for the weekend. About 4:30 I made my way to the Fargodome, which was essentially marathon HQ for the weekend where the start and finish line was, and a bunch of other events that weekend. They had an all day health and fitness expo that day filled exhibitors from other races and health supply vendors and a huge makeshift Scheels store on the show floor mostly comprising the expo. Picked up a lot of info on upcoming races in the area and I ended up buying my first ever Under Armor running shirt from the Scheels store. I actually ended up with two running shirts that weekend since I got a complementary Fargo Half Marathon themed running shirt from my swag bag at the packet pick up.

I perused the expo for about an hour, and then went up for a pasta luncheon they were having for runners to load up on carbs. I sat down at a table with two other veteran runner couples who were very nice and great to talk too. I feel like crap for forgetting their names, but they were both well experienced runners, with one couple from Hudson, Wisconsin and the other from Austin, Texas I believe. They all ran in quite a few marathons before and they had a bunch of great stories about their past runs and they did not seem to mind me picking their brains about a few other races I was curious about. I was surprised they seemed genuinely excited for me when I told them this was my first half marathon and I was shooting for a two hour goal compared to my PR of the few practice half runs I did before of 2 hours 18 minutes.

Also at the luncheon was Ivan Bistro, a former armed forces member who was injured in the line of duty and became permanently blind, but found solace in running. He was quite the inspirational speaker and I thoroughly enjoyed his speech. After that was over, it was time for the only run of Friday, a 5K where part of the proceeds went to get 1,000 pairs of running shoes for kids in the community. They were heavily promoting this race and were hoping to get 10,000 runners to make it the country's biggest 5K, but I believe they stopped short of 9,000. I knew of a few friends running this race so I stood by one of the last turns along with my friend Chris who was rooting on his wife, Lyzz in the race. We watched her finish, and we celebrated for a little while before going our separate ways for the night.

After getting stuck in horrific Fargodome traffic for a good hour to an hour and a half, I finally returned to my hotel and watched a little tv before lying down for some zzzs around 11pm. Unfortunately I simply could not fall asleep, and tossed and turned all night. I was just too psyched up for the race I trained nearly a half a year for. I know I did not sleep a minute because I kept checking my phone every half hour to an hour thinking about how much more time I would be able to sleep if I passed out at that very moment. That moment did not happen, and I finally got out of my vintage rock of a Motel 6 bed around 5am.

Now I was both excited and petrified of going into the fast approaching race with no sleep. I made it to the Fargodome around 6am and stretched and chilled out in the arena seating until it was time to line up for the half marathon race about an hour later. One other fun hurdle that morning and for about the first hour of the race was that it was raining. It was only a light rain, and at least there was not any wind that day and temps remained in the 60s throughout the race so the weather could have been a lot worse. They had us line up by our project finishing times, and even though I was shooting for two hours, I lined up with those shooting for two hours and ten minutes thinking I wanted to avoid my past two race mistakes and not start out guns blazing to avoid flaming out a couple miles in. Nice and steady is exactly what I did for the first two to three miles, I ran what seemed a slower starting paced than what I was accustomed to of around 10 minutes a mile. I was passing a lot of people though at the back of the pack so that kept me in high spirits.

The entire race day vibe was amazing, and so was the sense of community. There were spectators lined up on almost all the city blocks the race passed through, with many having creative signs and kids crying out for high fives! It was also cool to see bands set up at every mile. I am glad I still brought my MP3 player though with my custom playlist of tunes I had set up for the race to keep my motivated. I also loved there were plenty of water and Powerade stations every mile or two set up throughout the race. I remember two occasions where I doused myself with a cup of water to wash away the increasing sweat streaming down me as the rain stopped and the day got more humid.

I had some unexpected motivation around mile four of the race. Think of probably the five worst things that can happen to a runner, it happened to me at mile four....and again around mile seven. Now I did not collapse or got hurt, but it was definitely one of the next worst things. I am refusing to say what happened, but find me on a night of drinking and I may indulge you with the details. That said, I really wanted to finish the race and quickly forgot about getting no sleep and stepped up my pace from around 10 minutes a mile to 9 minutes a mile.

I prayed the night before to run my best and keep up a consistent pace, and if that was what needed to happen it worked. Somehow, someway I kept that pace up and after checking my mile splits on RunKeeper I was amazed I kept all my miles under the ten minute mark. When it came to the final mile, I mumbled a few words of encouragement to myself and hauled ass to finish strong. I really wanted to finish in under two hours, but I just missed it with a final time of 2:02:48. I am still super proud of my effort though and that I did way better than my practice run attempts.

That race day vibe gave me the boost I needed to keep up that pace and not slow down. I just kept telling myself to keep passing runners to maintain pace, and that is what I did. It seemed like a countless field of runners with no end in sight. Remember the classic arcade racing games, Hang-On or Pole Position? That is kind of what running a marathon is like, not really but there are some parallels by passing countless racers and never seeing what position you are in until you find out after the race. I found out my aforementioned official time online last night, my official average pace was 9 minutes, 23 seconds a mile, and I have an official placing in the half marathon of 2073rd of 5558 runners. Just squeezed into the top half.

I felt great about my run and took in some post race snacks that were available at the Fargodome to refuel. Later in the afternoon I met up with Chris and Lyzz to end my 105 day pizza exodus at Rhombus Pizza in Fargo. All three of us devoured their award winning T-Rex pizza; it never tasted better! But after the race, and that mighty fine pizza all that lack of sleep was setting in and I was getting very tired, and to top it off my left foot was pretty damn sore. I was originally planning to hit up this club in Fargo that was having an official post marathon party with several bands playing, but no sleep and a super sore foot resulted in me not wanting to rock out. Instead, I had an interesting hour long drive back to Grand Forks.

It was about 6pm when I got back last night, and I still wanted to do a little celebrating, so I met up with a couple of friends at this bar literally across the street from me. I will give a shout out to Denny's (the local bar, not the restaurant) because they somehow find a way to make a drink wicked strong, but still quite tasty. I got there at 8pm and was only there for a couple hours, but their three Long Islands I had their completely annihilated me and I succeeded in passing out happy, completely oblivious of my very aching left foot. It feels a bit better today, but still a little sensitive.

So that was my Fargo Marathon weekend. It was the right combination of awesome and horrible, and I will never forget a minute of it. I will keep running and hopefully have at least future blogs here on other races I compete in throughout the year. Thank you to everyone who helped support me and encouraged me in running this past year, every little word of encouragement helped me keep pushing for new goals and distances. I do not want to get too ambitious, but who knows, maybe next year at Fargo will mark the time I run my first ever full marathon.

Resolution 1 - Run Half Marathon - Day Before Preview Blog

Tomorrow is the big race day when I compete in my first ever half marathon race in Fargo. Past couple of days I have been trying to get in the right mindset to prepare for this event I signed up for nearly five months ago. I found a video showing a bunch of highlights and shots throughout last year's course so I know what I am in for. Yesterday I watched one of my favorite sports movies, Hoosiers followed up by an excellent running documentary, Spirit of the Marathon to get my psyche on.

Right after I finish writing up this blog, I will be heading down to Fargo where they have a ton of activities going on the day before the race. There is a fitness expo that will be going on all day, as well as a 5K run where the race organizers were trying to sign up 10,000 people for the nation's largest 5K and raise money for shoes for kids in the area. There is a pasta and lefse feed that evening so everyone can load up on carbs the day before the race.

It is too bad the weather is not looking too pretty for race day. When I last checked it looks like it will be raining off and on tomorrow morning throughout race time. At least the temperatures will be ideal ranging in the 60s tomorrow morning. They also are doing live online tracking of runners this year, so if you happen to be online tomorrow morning between 7:30 and 10, click here and then click 'track runner' to see my progress. I am shooting to finish the half in under two hours. The fastest I have done before on my several practice runs is 2 hours and 18 minutes, but I got a feeling I will have that race day adrenaline going on for a big boost which helped me achieve my fastest 5k and 10k times earlier this year.

I am super excited and super nervous for the race tomorrow. I got a feeling I will love it no matter how awesome or awful I perform. That wraps it up for my preview blog, check back in a couple days and hopefully I will have a detailed rundown of the marathon experience.

Resolution 2 - Drop 23 Pounds in 104 Days - Almost, But Not Quite

According to my first entry under resolution 2, I had 104 days and 23 pounds to go on my quest t o get to 170 pounds come race day of Fargo Half Marathon. I sought to accomplish this by giving up pizza and fast food during that timeframe and just trying to generally eat better all together and amping up my running.

It is almost judgment day, I am 100 days in, and only four days to go until the half marathon so I thought I would post my progress thus far as I could see myself easily neglecting to do so in the final days of prepping up for the big race! So unfortunately it looks like I am going to miss my goal. When I started this goal, I was at 193 pounds, I weighed in today at 178. I guess I can go sit in a sauna for a few hours and just hardcore sweat off those remaining eight pounds, but that just would not sit well with me. Still though, dropping 15 pounds in 100 days still seems a little impressive in my book and it will greatly help me to perform my best on Saturday.

Last week I went in for my annual physical at the local plasma donating center, and one of the things they look for in dynamic changes over the year is irregular weight loss so I told the nurse right away I have been working out a lot and eating better and that I have dropped a lot of weight in the last year. Sure enough, a year prior I was at 225, and at the beginning of 2012 when I started working out I was pushing 240.

During this timeframe I only cheated my pizza plan once when I was visiting my cousin during my vacation in Milwaukee. She is a vegan, and we went out to eat at this nice Italian restaurant. She kept talking up how she was looking forward to this vegan Lavosh (sp?) pizza she gets there and how it is a special treat for her and I would have felt terrible if I refused the slice she offered me. I think I only had Lavosh once before, and this version seemed radically different. It was a very thin, flaky crust and had a special kind of sprinkled cheese and chopped tomatoes on it, and that was it. It was actually all right, but tasted nothing like the pizza I am accustomed to. So I only had one slice of pizza this past 100 days, and it was in all likelihood the single healthiest slice of pizza that is out there.

I am actually getting a lot of good natured grief from coworkers about my pizza quest, and they got me looking forward to having pizza again come Saturday. I already got plans to eat pizza at Rhombus Pizza shortly after the marathon, the same place where I had my last real slice of pizza a 100 days ago and next week a few coworkers want to hit up a pizza buffet in town to celebrate me vanquishing my quest. A little under a year and a half ago when I first went a 100 days without pizza, I never thought I would dare do it again. While I may have just missed my weight loss goal by 8 pounds (give or take a few come four days), I think it is another achievement and a half to go this long without pizza and fast food. I do not plan to over indulge right afterwards all the time, but that first week I can see myself having pizza two times....maybe three.

Resolution 5 - Go Back to College - Decided

Since I looked into going back into school two weeks ago, I have been changing my mind ostensibly every other day whether or not I should go back or not. I spent a lot of time these past two weeks looking into ways to make going to work and school both full time possible, and I believe I found a way to make it work. It would absolutely kill me, but I could make it work for a year.

Unfortunately, I will not though because I went with my gut in the end. Something I just cannot pinpoint told me I should not go all the way with this. I like radio/podcasting, but I do not love it, maybe a few years ago I would say otherwise, but in the end I decided that I do not want to pursue a career path in something I do not 100% want. Especially if I go through the process all over again of getting a degree and failing to capitalize on it like before. So while I am failing on my goal of going back to college, it is not like I ended up not giving it any thought and ignored the goal the entire year. These last two weeks I consulted several family and friends about it, and went to the campus and got all the information I needed about it and gave this matter a serious think. I just ended up deciding it was simply not for me, and by deciding on this matter in this fashion in a way I feel I achieved this goal.

I was talking to another coworker recently about starting another podcast sometime later on this year. We threw a few ideas around, but nothing concrete was set and told him it has only been two months since I ended On Tap and I still want a few more months of a reprieve from podcasting before going back to it again. In the end, I feel I will enjoy radio/podcasting more as an occasional hobby instead of a full on career. We shall see what the future holds for me.

Bonus Resolution 2 - Get Back Into Baseball - Complete!

Going back to elementary school from Kindergarten all the way through 5th grade I LOVED baseball. I think I loved all sports as a kid, but baseball definitely took the cake. We would talk about baseball to death at the lunch table in school, and many summer days were spent playing baseball in a little open field by the railroad tracks with several of the same neighborhood kids. The summers of 1992, 1993 and 1994 I have great memories of playing summer little league baseball.

Up until that time too I was huge into collecting baseball cards. Whenever I was brought along to the weekly trip to the grocery store, the only solace I would take in after being dragged around the store for a couple hours was a pack or two of cards awaiting me at the end when we got home and instantly scouring through them in hopes of getting a valuable card. I still got a little stack of my most valuable cards, even though they have greatly gone down in worth over the years.

Then a few things happened within a year to turn me off from baseball. The first big thing was the family started spending the first of several summers in a row at a farm. I did not mind the summer farm life, as a matter of fact I think I was the only one of my siblings that enjoyed it when I think back on it, but an unfortunate tradeoff was not being able to take part of summer league baseball and neighborhood pick-up games anymore.

The second of the three deathblows to baseball for me was by 1994, and within the span of a couple years the average price of a pack of baseball cards went up from around 50 to 75 cents to $2 due to Upper Deck taking over the market with their premium produced quality cards and everyone else following suit and upgrading to more expensive material to produce their cards out of. This had a crappy ripple effect to where my parents would no longer pick me up a pack or two of cards to shut me up at the grocery store and before I knew it my baseball card hobby went up in smoke.

The last blow to baseball capping off the hat trick for me was the baseball strike of 1994. As a kid in those elementary school years, I always greatly looked forward to the World Series, even doubly more so than the Super Bowl. At the playground and lunch table, our sports talk went through the roof regardless if the Twins were in the postseason or not. Of course they won the '87 and '91 World Series at the time so it definitely helped they were an awesome team in my impressionable years, but every year we would thoroughly dissect every game of the World Series. In 1994 MLB cancelled the rest of the season with the strike and as a result World Series was cancelled too, and as a then 11 year old kid getting that taken away from me felt atrocious at the time and I just could not go back to baseball. For nearly two decades, I only kept up with baseball from the occasional highlights or big news stories like the Sosa/McGuire home run race and Ripken and Bonds chasing down records. All the big steroid and PED scandals from the past decade helped refrain me from getting back into it too.

So what got me back into baseball? Well, it was a gradual process that started about a year and a half ago. My dad retired in the beginning of 2011, and started going to the local senior center with his newfound free time. They were putting together a bus to go down to the Twins game and back for only $50 a person, which included the ticket. It was my first time ever at a Twins game at the new Target Field, and I loved the experience. Even though there were no announcers and we did not have the greatest seats in the world, I was still easily able to make out what was happening and the atmosphere just got me into all the small little intangibles that took place over the course of a game. The 2012 season came and went and I found myself actually making a little bit of an effort to look into baseball scores on my own and occasionally see what was going on in the league. My mom's boyfriend is a huge Twins fan, and whenever I came over to visit, he was usually in the living room watching the Twins game and I would usually go over and watch a few innings with him. I ended up catching about a dozen or so Twins games this way. I also ended up having an awesome BBQ last year with a couple friends, one of which was a huge Twins fan and the other a huge Cubs fan and when they met in Interleague play we drank quite a bit, and when the Twins won in a nail biter in extra innings I celebrated by drunkenly ordering a throwback Paul Molitor Twins jersey I was debating on for a few months.

Baseball has been back in action for a month now, and I have been keeping up with it on a daily basis now in ways I have not since I was a child. Technology has made it easier, instead of grabbing the morning paper or waiting for ESPN or local news highlights to see if the Twins won, I take advantage of the MLB app on my phone for instant access to the box score and AP write up of the game. I found an awesome Twins podcast, Gleeman and the Geek to help keep me up on all the latest Twins news and analysis and other happenings around the league. I also promised myself to try and catch at least one Twins game a week and I have been making good on that promise so far.

I have caught about six or seven games so far either watching with my mom's boyfriend or at various sports bars/restaurants in town. A new sports bar just opened up a couple weeks ago within a few block of me and I made it there last weekend and loved the place. They had plenty of televisions and they quickly turned it to the Twins game I requested; it was also nice they had 30 beers on tap too.

So yes, a month into the season I have considered myself back on the baseball wagon and enjoying it like I have not in 20 years. Go Twinkies!!!!

Resolution 5 - Go Back to College - We Shall See

In 2009, I graduated Northland Community and Technical college with a Associates Degree in Liberal Arts with Journalism emphasis. Over the next two years I sent out countless resumes, but unfortunately did not hear back from a single one. I was still doing Internet writing for several different blogs and other websites on the side for free as I was doing for several years before that, but towards the end of 2011 in the span of a few months, as many Internet sites come and go, they almost all went buh-bye simultaneously. Combine that with never hearing back from a single resume after nearly two years removed from graduating and I had an epiphany that it was time to walk away from that career path.

Since 2012 I have been trying to readjust my focus on life and trying to make the right changes to become a better person. That is the whole point behind this blog, to overcome several lifelong challenges I have been too reluctant on to make the jump. As I mentioned in the intro blog, I have a list of all 13 resolutions pinned to my wall at home, and I have already crossed off five of them, and it feels great to cross off each one. So no matter how trepid I may be when it comes to facing some of these more daunting resolutions, my whole mantra making me through this is "fuck it, it is on the list!"

That brings us to resolution five: return to college. The only thing I give a modicum of a damn about right now as far as career paths go is radio. I am relieved I finally ended the podcast and can go forward from that, and part of me wants to try out for different parts of radio, namely talk radio and sports broadcasting. A couple years ago I sent a couple resumes out to some local radio stations with some podcast samples. I knew it was a long shot with no legitimate radio background, but part of me wanted to see if there was a shot down that path. Of course, I never heard back from them.

Northland does have a radio program, and one that can be completed within a year to boot. I went over to Northland earlier today for the first time since I sold my last set of books shortly after I graduated in 2009. I inquired about the program and picked up a reenrollment form. It is great to see the program is only two semesters, but the catch is that it is on their Thief River Falls campus which is an hour away. I did not fill out any forms and officially reenroll yet, but there is a bus that goes out there twice a day, and I have been going over all the logistics on how to make it work. After cramming out a bunch of options, I believe I have found a way to somehow go to work and class both full time, and it is absolutely going to kill me, but it is only going to be for a year.

For a couple hours I procrastinated on it and thought there is no way I can make this work, but now I am returning to the "fuck it, it is on the list mantra" as it stares me in the face as I type this. I went to school half time and worked 50 hours a week at two jobs previously for four years, so I guess I can do it all over again, though only for one year instead of four this time. I am going to give this a serious think for a couple more days before moving forwards, but right now I am leaning towards giving this a shot.