Put down the double chocolate chip cookie. Hands where I can see them.  Step away. Slowly. Slowly. Don’t even glance at the brownies. Keep backing away from that table you’ve piled improbably high with snowman cupcakes and fudge squares and what the f*ck is that dark brown mound covered in sugar icing? Figgy pudding? Lemme have a taste. WHAT DID YOU JUST PUT IN YOUR MOUTH?! SPIT IT OUT! SPIT IT OUT! Oh for chrissake, a godiva salt toffee caramel?

Come on, people. What’s it with sugar and the holidays? That stuff is poison. Would you use the birth of baby Jesus as an excuse to pile a table full of alcohol and then try and drink all of it before January 1? Oh, you would. Ok, so you have. Still.

Followers of this blog know that I usually focus on what’s good for you: running is good for you; push-ups are good for you; butt-slapping is good for you; asking for help is good for you. There’s hardly ever a mention of what’s bad for you.  That’s because I’ve committed to limiting the scolding on this blog to a single post a year.

Well, this is the one.

Here’s the scold: sugar is an evil toxin being fed to us by giant food conglomerates, to the delight of pharmaceutical and health insurance corporations that want us all to become reliant on the medical establishment, and we should quit it.  Read more…

Tuesday, Dec. 25: eat, drink, repeat. No queerfit today.

Saturday, Dec. 29: regular 10:00 workout.

Tuesday, Jan. 1: brunch, rest & recover. No queerfit today.

NASA made an official announcement today that “The world will not end in 2012.” Well, whew.

End of the world or not, it is most certainly the darkest day of the year. I’m far enough up north that the sun’s been down since 4:30. To add cliché to misery, the snow just turned to rain. From here on out, the days get longer, yes, but before we get around to celebrating the impending light, let’s first give a little love to the grand darkness, shall we?

Darkness is not my strong suit. But I do know that it’s the darkest night sky, moonless and away from city lights, where the stars really turn it up. And it’s only from those stars that we can get a sense of the magnificent depth of space.

So…a few things you can do tonight to burrow in and snuggle up with your dark place. If you’re moping around feeling sad, consider it a head start into the broom closet of darkness. Here goes –

— Listen to a story about utter, shattering hopelessness. Here is Mike DeStefano telling The Junkie and The Monk, the single most powerful story in the entire history of storytelling.  After you listen to it – but only after you listen to it and bawl your eyes out – look up Mike DeStafano for the rest of his life story.

— Try again with that book that stumps you. For me, it’s Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters. Read more…

My dear queerfitters,

Fantastic workout on Saturday, with sandbags, overhead tire squatting, and tree climbing. Try doing that in your gym, yeah?

A little mid-week inspiration to get you going: Honeybee doing her thing with the rest of the barstarzz in a park in Harlem. I’m a few blocks away from there & heading that way, so J-star here…

…is your coach this evening. 6:15 p.m. at our usual Saturday spot, off Euclid Avenue on the Inman Park side of the Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA station.  Now go be awesome!

Here is what I packed for a four day trip to NYC and DC: underwear, toothbrush, contact lenses, hair gel, notebook, a flash drive with the presentations I had to give, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I did not bring my computer. I brought no clothes other than the underwear and what I wore on the plane. I considered leaving the 3.5 ounce tube of gel at home by loading up my hair with enough to last through the trip, but that seemed a bit unsanitary for NYC, where all manner of detritus fly around at hair level waiting for some gel to stick to.

Yes, I am the person George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air wanted to be behind in the airport security line: I pack light, travel efficiently and have a thing for slip on shoes.

Despite Clooney’s stereotyping, it’s not because I’m Asian. It’s because I have enough experience with four day work trips to NYC and DC to know all the things I don’t need. That made for a very light bag.

At the same time, I wanted to get lost and wander a bit. I wanted to not know the top ten Yelp-rated restaurants within a .2 mile radius. I wanted to not know how to get somewhere. I wanted to have no idea that a klezmer-polka accordion showdown was going down in a Williamsburg loft/art space that night. So I left my iPhone at home. That made for an even lighter bag, and a readiness to stumble into the unexpected. Read more…

In our ongoing search for a semi-lit Tuesday evening spot, we’re going to try out our Saturday location and see how it works for an evening workout. We’ll be up in the playground on the Inman Park side of the Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA station. There’s a floodlight and very nice mulch. Thanks to climate change, it’s going to be 70 degrees tonight after the sun goes down – come out and enjoy the end days with us!

If you need a little motivation to get yourself there, here’s 26 seconds of impossible.

If you can’t make it out tonight, then here’s 2 min. 38 sec of Bruce Lee playing pingpong with nunchucks. It’s fake, but it’s great. Get up out of your chair when you click on to watch – you have time to do 3 sets of 20 squats with 10 seconds rest.