Post Op

I have just come from my first bath since having my left knee "scoped" Wednesday. It was not a case of the wounded athlete sexily soaking his scars in a steamy hot tub, so, calm down, ladies. Instead, to keep the stitches dry, I had a Little Mermaid diaper taped to my knee wrapped in Saran wrap. Yum. And Saran wrap, as many comedians have already noted, only sticks to itself, so it was basically useless. Nice product you've got there.

Anyway, the bath was nice, and the surgery went well. My big concern going into the surgery was the anesthesia. I don't have much experience with drugs. I've never used them to induce sleep, so I didn't know what to expect. I imagined that my awake, alert consciousness would be trapped inside this doped out shell, bouncing around inside like a pinball, struggling to get out. Or perhaps a series of bizarre dreams, featuring gargoyles nibbling at my knees. In other words, a bad trip. I got none of that, of course. I dropped off to sleep in an instant, dreamed nothing and awoke what seemed to be just seconds later, groggy and a little chilly. My lovely wife scooped me up, took me home, put me in the downstairs bedroom and there I lay until the aforementioned bath.

Thus far, the recovery has gone well. The pain and discomfort have been minimal; I haven't used any of the prescribed pain medication. I'm restricted from walking around much, which has been biggest inconvenience. I write while walking around the neighborhood, so if this blog post sucks, blame the knee. Once the knee heals--in about a month, according to the doctor--I can resume my pursuit of the dunk. The doctor said that my miniscus, which acts as a shock absorber between the bones of the knee, is as thick now as it was the day I was born, so I should be able to return to full strength.

I'm no doubt a fool to resume the strenuous work of shaping up for the dunk, but then I was a fool to begin that pursuit in the first place, so why stop now? Come April I'll be sprinting up hills, doing knee-up jumps and, of course, warm up the Super Cat, Gil, I'm coming back.

Dream a Little Dream

Gil Thomas, my Dunk Dreams trainer, has a dream: equality for all, black and white, on the basketball court. On the hardwood, no one need feel inferior just because of the color of their skin. Because Gil, you see, has this crazy idea that white men CAN jump. With the proper training.

He has made a believer out of me. Before I injured my knee, I had improved my vertical jump by seven to eight inches. And I'm not only white, I'm old. At Gil's request, I give you video of some of the Great White Dunkers to inspire us all to greater heights.

What's In a Name?

Dunk. Slam Dunk. Slam. Jam. Slamma-jamma. Cram. Stuff. Throw down. Posterize. Boom-shak-a-lacka. Then there's the windmill, tomahawk, double-clutch, rock-the-baby, 360, alley-oop, and behind-the-head. People who have dunked are said to have the hops, to have skyed, flown, walked on air, climbed the ladder, gotten up and gotten sick with it. They've had air time, hang time and given someone a facial.

Home run. Homer. Tater. Four-bagger. Slam. Blast. Park it. Go yard. Touch-em-all. Take it downtown. Dinger. Long ball. Big fly. Bomb. Gopher. Money ball. Circuit clout. Crack. Moon shot. Round-tripper. Seat boomer. Tong. Tonk. Downtowner. Dial eight. Bash. Fence buster.

Have I missed any? Have you made up any that you're particularly proud of? Which has the most and the most colorful synonyms--the dunk or the home run? Let me know. Talk to me.

New, but Not Improved

This is a new blog post. The one I wrote yesterday--that one is already old. If you'd opened this website about half an hour ago, before I posted this, you'd have started re-reading yesterday's entry and then quickly stopped yourself. "Shoot," you'd have said, "what am I doing? This is old. It's a waste of my time."

Old is a waste of time. It just is. We value new because it relieves the boredom. New gives us something to do. We have to explore, experiment and become familiar with new. Once we've done those things, of course, it becomes old. That's the way it is with things. People are different. People are not like cars and iPods. People can make themselves new. My wife does this. New attitudes about herself, about life, new ideas about what to do with her life. She is constantly offering up things to explore, experiment and become familiar with. This is a good thing, and certain people are able to do it.

A mistake many people in my business--TV comedy--make is confusing people with things. They don't make shows for old people to watch (and old to them means anyone over 35--sorry) because they believe old people are done. They are through changing. They know what brand of toothpaste they like, they know the kind of detergent they want for their clothes, and you can show them commercials from now until the cows come home and nothing will relax their grip on that tube of Crest.

But that's just not the way it is. Look at me, for example. I'm 51, well past what TV defines as old, but I'm doing something new. I want to dunk. That opens me up to a whole new line of dunking-related products. A year ago, at 50, I would have had no interest in a pair of jumpsoles. But now, at 51, when I'm even older, I'm looking at ads for the damn things, trying to find the lowest price. Imagine. An old person wants something new.

TV executives also do not like to hire old people to write their shows. They believe that, like a windup toy, the older person has been sitting on a shelf, unchanged from the last time they took it down to fiddle with it, and when they wind it up and set it on the floor, it will do the same old tricks. But people can have new ideas. They can have new experiences that give them new things to say. Couple that with the experience and expertise to know how to say them and you'd think you'd have a pretty hot commodity on your hands. Sadly, no.

TV executives have had these attitudes about their audience and their writers for a long time. They haven't changed. It's getting old.

A Sharp Left Turn

So, I got another phone call from my bank the other day. Gil, my Dunk Dreams trainer, was attempting to cash the check I'd written to pay him. This happens every time Gil cashes one of my checks. The bank asks to verify that I wrote the check, verify the amount, verify the check number...they're full of questions. Take a look at the picture of Gil in the right-hand corner. Now, what is it about him that would make a bank nervous about giving him any of my money? And it's not just my bank and my money. While cashing another client's payment, Gil once overheard the teller on the phone tellng the client, "I've got two black guys here (Gil had one of his nephews with him) trying to cash one of your checks." Nice.

Gil and his nephews have also been pulled over in San Clemente for no reason other than, well, being in San Clemente, and they've been ushered out of the USC Research Library. What were they doing there? Research. Gil takes this all with as much good humor as any person could muster. "I just think, 'Don't they know, I'm the Dunkmaster. I was on Katie Couric.'" But me, well, it just pisses me off. It makes me sad. It makes me want to do ... something. But that's the problem. Do what? So that makes me feel impotent. Another lovely feeling.

A few years ago while writing for the TV show "Roc," I befriended one of the writers, a young black guy, and I remember similar feelings when he told what would happen whenever he'd walk through the Beverly Center mall with more than one of his friends. I think the moral to this story is, if you make friends with black people, prepare to be aggravated. Your ability to maintain any rose-colored illusions about the society in which we live will be severely tested. You might also be compelled to re-evaluate some of your own attitudes. I remember in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 thinking it might not be such a bad idea to seal the borders to anyone with a turban and an "al-" in their name. For a while, anyway. You know, until things settled down. The thing is, reacting to people as a category saves us a step. But, of course, it does an injustice to the individual, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. See how aggravating this is? But, fuck it, Gil's a nice guy, so I guess it's worth it.

Low Flying Objects

So they're saying that this year's NBA Slam Dunk Contest was the best ever. It certainly was impressive. Gerald Green set a cupcake and candle on the back of the rim, lit the candle, jumped up, blew out the candle and dunked. That, of course, is the dunk I've been training to do, so, thank you Mr. Green, now I have to think of something else. That was followed by Dwight Howard donning a Superman cape and flying so high above the basket he was able to throw the ball down through the hoop. He received a perfect score of 50--five 10s--for that dunk. Next year, to get a 50, he'll have to do the same dunk, but while catching a bullet in his teeth.

That's the thing about the Slam Dunk competition--I can't decide if it's inspiring or intimidating. Does it make me want to lace up my shoes, get out there and try to emulate what I've just seen? Or does it make me want to burn my shoes and sell my basketball hoop for scrap metal? Perhaps what I need is a competition for some of the NBA's more earthbound athletes. An NBA Lay-Up Contest.

Magic Johnson: "First up is the 12th man on the Toronto Raptors ... Dribbling up to the basket with his right hand ... he switches the ball to his left and lays it up left-handed!"
Charles Barkley: "A left-handed lay-up. Very nice. And I understand he's naturally right handed."
Magic: "You're kidding. Wow. That is impressive. Very fundamentally sound. I hope you kids are watching. What do our judges say?"
Charles: "Looks like Danny Ainge gave him an eight, Kevin McHale gave him a nine, and Bob Cousy, one of the great lay-up artists of all time ... he only gave him a seven."
Magic: "Well, Bob's seen some great lay-ups in his day."
Charles: "That's true... What do we have now? Our next contestant, he trots out onto the floor--he's in a Superman costume. He's got the cape and everything."
Magic: "What's he doing now? He's removing the cape ... he's putting on a suit. A three-piece suit. He's changing into Clark Kent. Unbelievable. We've got Clark Kent in the building."
Charles: "He's even putting on a tie. What is that, is that a Windsor knot he's making in that tie?"
Magic: "I believe it is. It's a nice one, too. Very tight. So Clark Kent takes the ball, he dribbles and goes UNDERNEATH the basket, flips the ball back over his head--a REVERSE lay-up."
Charles: "A reverse lay-up. In a suit and tie. Even Bob Cousy's got to give him props for that one."
Magic: "Amazing. We've had a left-handed lay-up. A reverse lay-up--"
Charles: "In a suit and tie."
Magic: "In a suit and tie. What do we have now? Our next contestant--oh, my God, he's white. He's incredibly white."
Charles: "One of the whitest men I've ever seen. He is actually the color of snow. When you're that white, can you even get off the ground? Can you actually even jump?"
Magic: "He doesn't jump so much, it's actually more of a hop."
Charles: "What's he gonna do? He's got a birthday cake ... What's he doing with that cake?"
Magic: "He's setting it on the floor ... Oh my God, he's going to jump--or, I guess, hop--over the birthday cake before he lays the ball in."
Charles: "Whoa. I hope he knows what he's doing. Wait a minute, what's this, what's happening? It looks like ... He's putting in candles--he's lighting the candles!"
Magic: "That means he's going to have to hop over the cake and the candles ... "
Charles: "If he doesn't clear those candles, he could set his shoes on fire."
Magic: "That must be why ... yes ... He's got Steve Nash standing by with a fire extinguisher."
Charles: "Here he comes, nice dribble ... He hops--OVER THE CAKE. HE HAS CLEARED THE CAKE."
Magic: "I don't think he cleared the candles, though. He's got a shoelace ... on his left foot ... It caught on fire!"
Charles: "Steve! Get over there with that fire extinguisher."
Magic: "They got it. They got it."
Charles: "But still. He cleared the cake. And that wasn't no one-layer sheet cake. That thing has two layers. With frosting in between."
Magic: "That's right. He hopped over the cake ... Did he make the lay-up?"
Charles: "Who knows? When you've got a man that white hopping over an entire cake, you're not watching the ball."
Magic: "I've got to say, Charles, this was the best Lay-Up competition we've ever had."
Charles: "Yes indeed. And by the way--the cake is delicious."

Just About to Lose My Mind

As regular readers of this blog know (are there actually any such people), a few months ago I tore the miniscus in my left knee. This is not a terribly serious injury as injuries to the knee go, but it will require surgery--arthoroscopic surgery, but surgery nonetheless.

This has put my pursuit of the dunk in neutral. In order that I might not slip into reverse, my Dunk Dreams trainer, Gil Thomas, has devised a workout to keep my legs strong without stressing my knees. (What stresses a knee? Traffic doesn't seem to bother it, so right there my knee is better adjusted than I am.)

For starters, I have done many exercises in my swimming pool. I have climbed into the damn thing on mornings so cold my breath was thick as smoke to stand and kick my legs straight from the hip, 50 reps with each leg; then another fifty kicking straight back; then 50 more kicking with a bent knee to strengthen the quads. I have wrapped straps around my ankles to do leg extensions on the Mini-Gym--a remarkable iso-kinetic contraption that gives an excellent workout without the next-day soreness one often gets from weightlifting.

That's not me, but

it is a mini-gym

I have lowered myself onto the Super Cat to do squats and jump-squats on one leg--the good leg, of course. I feared this would leave me with one Popeye-strong leg and one Wimpy-weak leg, but Gil assured me that wouldn't happen. Of course, if he's wrong he has nothing to fear--I won't be able to catch him because I'll only be able to run in circles.

The Super Cat

All of this is being done so that after my surgery I'll be able to recover quickly and soon resume my pursuit of the dunk. All of this--it's all about the dunk. Truth be told, I could live with my knee the way it is now. I'm not able to run or jump at anything near full speed, but what 51-year-old man needs to do such things? Only a 51-year-old man determined to dunk. I have stood freezing in a pool, jumped and squatted on one leg, and, finally, I have decided to undergo an operation--the first operation of my life, mind you--all so I can dunk. I ask you, dear reader--have I lost my mind?

La Dunk

If I were a 51-year-old WOMAN who was able to dunk a basketball, I would be the next president of the United States. What makes me say this? Recently, a video of a 6-foot-8 high school girl dunking during a game made the ABC Evening News. When a 6-foot-8-inch man dunks, it does not make the news. Unless it's a particularly spectacular dunk, it won't even make a local sportscaster's highlight reel. A 6-foot-8-inch man might, however, make the news if he were NOT able to dunk. Such are a man's advantages in the battle of the sexes.



So there you have it. We've got women dunking now. The revolution is complete. This is a relatively new phenomenon. I don't remember women doing this 20 years ago. Is this strictly a function of the whole Title-IX, the-girls-can-play-too movement, or does it have something to do with the hormones in the milk everyone is always shouting about?

I'm not complaining, mind you. As a dunk aspirant, I salute all the dunkettes. The dunkstresses. The dunk-a-ladies. I wonder, though, if a woman can truly dunk. Yes, she can stuff the ball through the basket, but can she DUNK? By that I mean, can she do it with the proper attitude? The dunk is aggressive and in-your-face. It says, "Take that asshole." This is not the language of a lady. Or, in any event, it is certainly not the language a lady uses in the company of other ladies. A man could push a woman over the edge and into such an attitude, but women do not typically play basketball with men.

And, indeed, when I watch the videos of the young lady dunking, I see none of the I-am-king-of-the-jungle roar one typcially sees when a guy dunks. Her dunks are very polite. She goes up, stuffs it in, comes down, trots away and that's it. Thanks for the two points, see ya next time. She doesn't beat her chest, she doesn't point at anybody, she doesn't even look around to make sure everyone saw it. No statement was made beyond a very matter-of-fact "I'm so damn tall, what do you expect?" I'm guessing that there are more women out there who are able to dunk but they just ... don't. Their disposition doesn't demand it. They are not driven to belittle, provoke and shame the way a man is. They do those things, but not with a man's violence.

So I salute Brittney Griner and Lisa Leslie, two women I can think of off the top of my head who can stuff the ball through the basket. But I believe we are still waiting for the first woman who can DUNK.

Area 51

In my first blog as a 51-year-old, I've decided to write about the advantages of becoming an age-encrusted coot. A fossil. A bag of bones. A relic. One thing that occurrs to me immediately is that there are many colorful nicknames for the condition. Another advantage, for me anyway, is that with each passing year, I get closer to the Shit Hat. Years ago, my wife and I were at Lake Elsinore, and there, wandering the streets of the local village, was an ancient, creaky old soul, and on his head was a distinctive baseball cap. This cap was topped with a load of fake shit, and under the fake shit were the words "Shit Head." My wife vowed that when I reached that age, she would get me my own Shit Hat. Size 7 1/4, please.

Now, as regards chasing one's Dunk Dream, there are three main advantages. If you train with Gil Thomas, as I do, you typically end up working out with people who are much younger. Much younger. Twenty-five to thirty years younger. Therefore, it's perfectly okay if, in exercise after exercise, you bring up the rear. In fact, it's expected. If you can do what they do, even if it takes you longer to do it, you still win. No need to be the first one to the top of the hill--take your time. Simply making it there will suffice. Reduced expectations -- don't denounce them as youthful condescension. Embrace them. Make them work for you.

Which brings me to the next advantage. The trainer will often use your age as a bludgeon against the youngsters. "What do you mean you can't do 30 squats? Mike did them, and HE'S FIFTY!" Your performance becomes the low bar that the youngsters dare not trip over. There is no greater shame than being beaten by The Antique.

Another thing--age makes one's achievements more remarkable. If a 20-year old busts his ass for six months and finally dunks--big fucking deal. The world will barely take notice. But if I manage to slam one home for the first time at the ripe old age of 51--I'm going on Oprah!

Finally, with advancing age comes an increased spirituality. The cynic might say that that is merely a case of the old bag of bones fervently kissing up to God to get on His good side before He draws the final curtain. You want God's last impression of you to be a good one so He saves you a space in the up elevator. I don't know. I think the increased spirituality comes from actually experiencing the divide between body and soul. Your body is breaking down, you can feel its agonies. However, that other thing inside you--your spirit, that energy that you perceive as yourself--that remains unchanged. That feels the same. With each passing year, as you feel more acutely the deterioration of the shell, the difference between that and the vitality of the spirit becomes more pronounced. You begin to suspect that, yes, perhaps there is something in me that will live forever.

And then, of course, there's the Shit Hat.

'Roids

Now that I am involved in something vaguely athletic--trying to dunk--and I have this forum, I can pop off about steroids. Let me begin by saying I think steroid use should absolutely be banned by the governing body of every sport in every land. First of all, anything that shrinks the testicles--gone. Beyond that they've been linked to rage, depression, cancer, various liver ailments ... the list goes on and on. They do far too much physical harm for their use to be sanctioned.

However, I have no quarrel with steroids' role in enhancing athletic performance. Let Marion Jones keep her gold medals, let Barry Bonds' home run record be asterisk free and get off Roger Clemens' back already. Have I missed something, or don't we want our athletes to try to enhance their performance? From what I understand, and, remarkably, I have read a thing or two about their effects, steroids are not a magic pill. It's not as if you can shoot your ass full of steroids, go to bed looking like Woody Allen and wake up with the pecs of Lou Ferrigno. You still have to work out like a bastard for weeks at a time. Steroids can help you with that; they reduce the recovery time after exercise. In other words, an athlete on steroids can work out harder and more often. Again, isn't that what we want our athletes to be doing? I'd rather our athletes spent all their time in the gym than, I don't know, killing dogs.

That's why I don't begrudge Marion and Barry the records they set while using steroids (or, in Barry's case, allegedly using steroids). They still had to work for it. Over the years, we have learned many things about the body and how to optimize its performance. Today's athletes do a lot of things to prepare themselves that were unheard of 30, 40, 50 years ago. Baseball players, for example, never used to lift weights. They had some superstition about how it would rob them of much needed flexibility. Now, damn near all of them lift weights, and obviously it enhances their performance. So where do we draw the line? How strictly do we want athletes to adhere to the way things have always been done? Is a record only valid if the player lived Babe Ruth's lifestyle? Do we need one record book for guys who eat hot dogs and drink beer and another for those who lift weights and eat vegetables?

Another thing that drives me up a wall is this reference to the Steroids Era. For God's sakes, these guys did not invent the practice of taking a drug to help them play better. Several superstars from the '50s and '60s have admitted to taking amphetamines to give them a boost during the dog days of the long baseball season. It seems very likely that at least one or two home runs each year cleared the fence because the guy with the bat in his hands had just given himself a little boost. So for what exactly are we penalizing the players of the Steroids Era? Taking better drugs?

The debate about steroids is filled with hypocrisy, hysteria and self-righteousness. It's stupid to take steroids. But from what I can see, taking issue with the achievements of the athletes who took them is just as dumb.

Hank

I believe it is my son Hank's goal to obliterate his old man. He will not rest until he has left me with nothing, nothing I can point to and say, "This is my domain. I excel at this beyond all those who call themselves Teverbaugh." And, yes, in the privacy of my own home, I do talk like that occasionally.

First there was the guitar. We started taking lessons together when he was about 10. In the beginning, I progressed much faster than he did, as his little fingers struggled to make even the simplest chords. Not being as proficient as his 46-year-old father drove him absolutely nuts. I, on the other hand, was fine with that. But his little hands grew and his maleable brain absorbed the rhythms of classic rock, and soon his guitar playing advanced from noise with a recognizable tune floating around in there somewhere, to nearly note-perfect recreations of the riffs and solos I grew up listening to. Meanwhile, I was still trying to pluck out the chorus to "Peaceful Easy Feeling." I've almost got it.

Next came math. Math was always my thing. Hell, I took calculus as an elective in college because I knew it'd be an easy A. Hank inherited my math gene and quickly became one of the best mathematicians in his class. Still, I was able to double-check his work and tutor him when needed throughout 4th, 5th, 6th and most of 7th grade. But then he started getting into the areas I had forgotten. He is in the 8th grade now, and I have cried uncle. To me, the equations in his textbook look like the scribblings on Einstein's chalkboard. I am eating his math dust, and it tastes like pi.

Now, my dominance in sports hangs in the balance. He has grown as tall as I am, so I don't know how much longer I can beat him in basketball. Plus, I have enrolled him to workout with Gil Thomas, my Dunk Dreams trainer. I know. I'm an idiot. He is already jumping nearly as high as I was before injuring my knee. He has risen to the challenge of Gil's workouts extremely well. I have learned that my son is capable of pushing himself and working through the pain of fatiguing muscles. Sure, there are times when I have to nag him to get off the couch and go to Gil's class, but there have been as many times when he's come to me eager and willing to put his body to the test. He truly has impressed the hell out of me. If he doesn't dunk before I do, it will only be because I took a baseball bat to his legs. I won't do that, of course--his mother would get too angry. So I am fated to stand by and watch my son best me once again.

Finally, I write comedy for a living. And my son ... well, the little bastard has a wonderful sense of humor. I think we all see where this going. God help me.

Growing Up

Growing old and growing up, of course, are two different things. You can do one without doing the other. It's not advisable, but it happens. In attempting to dunk a basketball at the age of 50, my aim is to preserve a sense of physical vitality and longevity. I need to believe that the end is nowhere in sight. But because my goal involves a basketball, I suppose it's possible to assume that I am also attempting to forestall the aging process emotionally, to maintain that eager immaturity that in grown men is often referred to as "boyishness."

Let me give a big fat "no" to that one. For me, boyishness is so ten years ago. Or maybe seven or eight. I don't remember exactly when, but I do remember making a conscious decision to ... well, for want of a better term, act my age.

Guys who don't act their age have become something of a pet peeve of mine. They are celebrated on the big and small screens, and that just annoys the hell out of me. In comedy, particularly, no other portrayal of men seems permissible anymore. The central figure of so many films and TV shows is the lovable oaf who just won't grow up. In other words, he runs from responsibility as if it were a hungry lion. Typically, he just wants to have a good time hangin' with his buddies, but some force--usually an incredibly beautiful woman--compels him to change. A recent and very popular example of tihs was the movie "Knocked Up," or as I like to call it, "According to Jim: the Early Years." (Think about it--he's an overweight slob, she's a beautiful blonde; one could easily read that movie as the story of how TV's Jim and whatever his wife's name is met.) I understand that the fun-loving guy is a more obviously comic figure, but could we at least try something else?

I confess that for many years I affected a certain boyishness. But that ended about ten years ago, while on vacation in Miami with my wife. Sightseeing in some fancy-pants hotel, I found myself surrounded by a bunch of very business-y looking guys in suits. They seemed capable and in charge. I felt like a child among them, less mature, even though at 41 I was actually older than most of them. I realized then that my "boyishness" was nothing more than my fear of being ultimately responsible. In other words, I was afraid to be the guy with whom the buck stops. Hence my retreat to boyishness, because nobody would put a boy in that role. I immediately realized how pathetic that was and vowed to change. I went home, shaved away the haircut I'd had since high school, started wearing shirts with buttons, grew some facial hair and began the difficult task of updating my perception of myself. I guess that's why whenever I see some 40-year-old jackass in baggy shorts with his cap on backwards I just want to spit with rage. I figure if I can grow up, you can, too.

So don't confuse my quest to dunk with some Peter Pan-ish desire to be young forever. I want to live forever, sure, but, I promise, I'll always act my age.

A Success Story

For any who dare doubt the effectiveness of Gil Thomas's Dunk Dreams workouts, below is a video that should convince even the most skeptical. The young man shown in the video is someone I have worked out with personally. He could not dunk when he first began his workouts, but in just a few months, he got there. And he's just 5-foot-10. He is an inspiration to us all. Keep the dream alive!

Un Age Certin

I began my quest to dunk largely to escape the reality of my advancing age. That was my plan. But as the saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Indeed, throughout this journey, circumstances have thrown my age back in my face like a baboon hurling its feces.


To be fair, my journey has not been an unrelenting hailstorm of baboon shit (that's the last time I'll revisit that image, I promise). In the beginning, learning to dunk had exactly the desired effect. I felt like a kid. Not so much because my body was rejuvenated by the workouts, but because I was joining a group of people who had been training together for months. I was the new guy. The new kid. I didn't know the ropes. I had a lot to learn. And there is something about the role of student that makes one feel young. A student, after all, must be open, willing, trusting, and all of these are qualities we are most likely to have when we are young, before age and experience have closed us off, made us wary and put us on our guard. So when we slip back into that student role, we slip back in time a little bit as well. I suspect that may be part of the reason--other than the obvious one of having time on their hands--why retirees take so many classes.


Other things reminded me of my antiquity, however. Early in my training, it was suggested I take a supplement, Triflex, designed to strengthen one's joints against possible injury. One's old, creaky joints. I'd never given my joints a second thought when I was younger, but now doctors and friends constantly cautioned me to be careful with my elbows, shoulders and knees. My God, you'd think I was held together with chewing gum. I appreciated their concern but they seemed to be forgetting something--I wasn't old. Or rather, I didn't want to be.

Also, Gil occasionally likes to predict which of his clients will achieve his dunk dream first. By the summer, I had made a lot of progress; I was grabbing the rim. Not just touching it, grabbing it, getting about four inches of my hand above the hoop. At the rate I was progressing, Gil figured, I would be dunking about the same time as J.C., a 17-year-old high school junior. I'm 6-foot-1, J.C. is 5-foot-7, yet we would be dunking at about the same time. So what was my handicap? It was unspoken but quite clear--the 33 years I'd spent on the planet before J.C. was even born.

Finally, while I was able to keep pace with the youngsters during the workouts, doing so took everything I had. I was panting, heaving and sweating like a beaten mule; meanwhile, the little bastards next to me were dabbing a bead or two of perspiration--there wasn't enough of it to call it sweat--from their unlined brows. This was the most vexing of the reminders of my age because it was the most definitive. The body just ain't what it used to be. I can push it, but at my age, it pushes back. It can only take so much.

It's late in the summer, I'm consistently grabbing the rim by this time, so close to dunking I've started to actually have dreams about it, and we're working out at USC on a morning that's ridiculously hot. It's the last exercise of the workout--I put the huge rubber bands around my waist and have to sprint about 50 yards while dragging a fellow dunk dreamer behind me. A feel a twinge in my left knee but don't think much about it until later that day, when the pain has gotten worse. I'd never had any trouble with my knees before, so this was disturbing. Weeks and weeks went by, but the pain wouldn't go away. I stop running, I stop jumping, Gil, ever ingenious, devises a workout that keeps my legs strong without stressing my knees, but the pain persists. I finally go in for an MRI and it shows a tear in my miniscus, a little strip of cartlidge that acts as a shock absorber in the knee.

Surgery would be required. The first doctor I talk with about it says typically people recover fully from such an operation, but I probably won't--because of my age. The baboon had wound up and thrown a nice steaming heap smack in the middle of my face (okay, so I broke my promise). I find a doctor who's prognosis is more hopeful, and I am currently awaiting surgery. I hope this doctor's right and I'll have enough of my miniscus left to get back to what I was doing. I want to resume my pursuit. I want to dunk. I'm tired of standing around watching while the other guys run, jump and strain. It only reminds me that I have broken down. And that is the reality about age that we can't escape. Things break down. It's just something we have to accept. But there's a line between acceptance and resignation; that's a line I'm not willing to cross.

So this whole thing with the knee is frustrating, but ultimately, it could end up adding something to the achievement when I dunk. Not only will I dunk for the first time at age 51, but I will do it on a surgically repaired knee. That ought to impress the hell out of Oprah.

Mrs. Mike

Now here’s a side of the story you won’t get from Mike. Because it’s from Mrs. Mike.
Like many wives, I have a long history of asking my husband, “What do you want for your birthday?” and for years the answer had always been the same -- “Oh, I don’t want anything special.” And that would result in him receiving a couple of shirts that I liked but honestly would not do anything to change his life. Last birthday, though, was a biggie. I don’t like to use the exact number, but if you’ve been reading this blog at all, you know what milestone I’m talking about.
This pivotal, though unmentionable, birthday was weighing on Mike, I could tell. The previous summer he’d gone digging for a pair of shorts to wear in the 100-degree heat and came up with a pair that didn’t zip. Now me, I’ve had two kids, and even before the two kids I’d been gaining and losing the same five pounds for years. Unzippable pants are nothing new. But Mike had never experienced that particular blend of shame, disbelief, anger and self-loathing. Mike was born skinny. He may not have always had the most honorable dietary habits, but he had ironclad work ethic in the gym. He’d go to the gym like a postal worker goes around delivering mail -- no rain, no storm, no gloom of night after a crappy day at work, nothing would stop him. Even when I got sick of going with him, even when I may have suggested his fitter-than-thou attitude was starting to get a little grating, nothing stopped him. What compelled him like this? I thought for a while it might be the sight of a bunch of sweating women splayed open as only they can be on a adductor/abductor machine. But I was wrong. I realize now that the main reason Mike worked out so hard for so long was because the workouts kept him connected to who he really is.
At heart he’s an athlete. He may have a long resume of jobs that keep a man’s ass in his seat, but at heart, he’s still an athlete.
(The other reason Mike has always worked out so much was because he likes to eat cheeseburgers and fries. He likes them a lot. More about that some other time.)
We have a mixed marriage. He is athletic. I am not. I got a lesson in the difference between these two fundamentally different types of people once while Mike was signing himself up for a city softball league. The guy from Parks & Rec was exhorting the players to remember to bring a photo ID to the first game. “Now I understand how it is,” the man said, much like a preacher talking about our common mortal failings. “These men want to play ball. They’re not thinking about a photo ID. These men are athletes. All they know is there’s a game, so where’s my shoes and where’s my car keys? All they know is there’s a game and they are athletes. Still and all, you need a photo ID.”
From my seat in the back, I burst out laughing. Much to my surprise, nobody else thought this was funny. Looking back, I realize I knew very little about athletes. They really are very different.
Now getting back to the birthday, I guess I was thinking it would be another two-, maybe three-shirt kind of year, but Mike had something else in mind.
This birthday’s tough on a lot of people, but Mike wasn’t going out without a fight. He wasn’t ready to give up on himself -- the youthful, athletic guy he’d always been. There may be a whole lot of candles on the cake from now on, but this birthday wasn’t going to be the start of any downhill slide. Instead, Mike said he wanted to start dunk-training, the dunk being a perfect symbol of youth and power and strength. That’s what he wanted for his birthday -- he wanted to learn to dunk -- and I wish I could tell you I heard all this and I totally got it. I didn’t. But I also knew I married an athlete, no nice shirt was going to do it for him this year.
Mike’s still chasing the dunk dream, but in the meantime I can tell you the body’s looking pretty amazing. Toned but not bulky. Tight, flat, six-pack stomach. Really nice arms. And for the first time, really nice legs. Oh, and those shorts that didn’t zip? They’re kinda loose these days.

The Twisted Tale of the Adjustable Hoop

I've talked about how difficult the Dunk Dreams workouts are, but ... do they work? Do they actually help you jump higher? Well, there was a moment when I was convinced I'd wasted my time. I was ready to demand a refund.

Before my first workout with Gil, I tested my jumping ability on the basketball hoop in our driveway. It's one of those adjustable-height hoops, so I cranked it up to the top, took a few steps back and let her fly. I surprised myself by jumping up and actually touching the rim. My memory was that, back in my day, that's about how high I was able to jump. I was very pleased with myself. Here I was 50 years old and I was still jumping as high as my 20-year-old self. "Good for you, Mike," I thought, "you've kept this old body in pretty good shape." Yep, I was patting myself on the back something fierce. Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat.

Then I began working out with Gil Thomas. For the next three months I jumped--I jumped straight up in the air, I jumped bringing my knees to my chest, I jumped kicking my heels to my butt, I jumped over hurdles and with strange shoes on my feet.

The Jump Sole

I ran up hills, dragging other dunk dreamers behind me as ballast. I strapped huge rubber bands over my shoulders--rubber bands so thick and strong it felt as though they would shoot me down through the center of the Earth--and did squats, matching my strength against theirs. I drove to San Clemente, Culver City and Pasadena to work out on the Super Cat, this odd contraption designed for squats and jump squats. I watched as Gil piled more than 300 pounds on the thing and ordered me to do 15, 25, then as many as 40 squats without rest. I turned my head as men half my age doubled over and vomited because they'd pushed their bodies so hard. (I never vomited, but I sure as hell felt like it.)

The Super Cat

I spent days, especially in the first six weeks, when, after working out, walking was a painful chore. The muscles in my legs were screaming in revolt. "You're 50, goddammit. Why can't you just take up golf?" they seemed to be saying. My wife commented on the irony of my condition. Here I was, working out like a bastard to stay young, she'd say, but I walked like an old man. "I'm just glad I can walk at all," I'd say, still smarting from my latest round with the Super Cat.

But I was getting stronger. I was noticing muscles in my thighs and calves that weren't there before. And once the pain in my legs subsided, I felt a spring in my step I hadn't felt in years. I felt as though I had the legs of a 25-year-old man. I was ready to blast through the ceiling.

Then, after three months of working out--it was about April of last year by this time--Gil gave all of us two weeks off. He wanted us to rest for an entire week, give our legs a chance to recover, and then test our jump. An entire week's reprieve from working out--I was elated. It's one thing to skip a workout because you're too tired or not feeling well--you can't really enjoy it because of the nagging feeling that you COULD have worked out, you were just too big a baby. But to skip workouts because YOUR TRAINER ORDERED YOU TO, my God what a gift. I wasn't slacking off, I was giving my muscles the chance to heal and grow. It may look like I'm watching television, but this is actually a vital part of my fitness regime.

After my glorious week of rest, I took myself down to the nearest gym. I was going to test my jump. I went to an actual indoor gym because Gil always said that you get the truest test of your jump if you take off from a wood floor. The gym was empty. No need for me to feel embarrassed or self-conscious. I took a few steps back from the rim, launched myself up with my powerful new legs and ... touched the rim. Hmmm, I thought. I just touched the rim. I was able to do that before I even started these workouts. Perhaps, I reasoned, I'm not warmed up. I leapt again. And again. And again. Each time--rim, rim, rim. No higher. What the fuck? Now I'm starting to get pissed. I spent months lifting, jumping, sprinting, straining--for this? For weeks I shuffled around on sore legs, scooting across the floor like Grandpa Moses, and I'm not getting any more air than I was before I started? This is bullshit!

I drove home, parked in the driveway, and there it was--our basketball hoop. The one I had measured myself against all those months ago. It seemed to mock me. "Hah, old man. You think you can defy age, defy gravity? Kiss my ass." Angry, I got out of the car and ran toward the hoop. I took off and--grabbed the rim. Got damn near my entire hand above the damn thing. Now I was puzzled. Why was I able to jump so much higher here than I had been in the gym? My driveway is concrete, the gym floor is wood--it should be the other way around. Then I remembered something. My basketball hoop is adjustable. Could it be ....

I hadn't allowed anyone to adjust the rim since I measured my jump against it three months ago. It was the same height then as it is now. But, is it possible ...

I got out a tape measure. Measured my hoop. The tale of the tape--9-feet, 8-inches. I had measured my jump against a short hoop. Three months ago I was not able to touch the rim--at least not one that stood the regulation 10-feet high. Back then I was only able to jump 9-feet, 8-inches. But today, in the gym, I DID touch the rim. An honest-to-goodness, regulation-height 10-foot rim. I had improved. By a little more than four inches. In only three months! My God, I thought, at this rate I'll be dunking by Independence Day! I felt relief, exhilaration and like an idiot, all at the same time.

So the Dunk Dreams workouts DO work. Remarkably well. And yes, I am a boob.

Cutting Loose Some Ballast

Dunking a basketball involves being airborne, and things that fly are typically light weight. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when, after just a couple of workouts with Gil Thomas, the dunkmaster of Dunk Dreams, I was told I needed to shed a few pounds.

I never had to think much about my weight before and I certainly had never dieted. I was 6-foot-1 and a shade over 200 pounds (202, I believe) when I started working out with Gil. I was always basically fit. A woman at the Al-Anon meeting I used to attend regularly (that's a topic for another blog, believe me) actually thought I was a retired professional baseball player. But Gil wanted me lighter. There's no way I could get far enough off the ground at my current weight, he said. Which initially didn't make sense to me. Jumbo jets fly, and I didn't weigh nearly as much as one of those. But then, jumbo jets have huge engines and I have two skinny little legs, so I was beginning to see Gil's point.

Thus began my first experience with an actual, honest-to-God diet. At Gil's urging, I eventually settled on the South Beach Diet. I got the book. It's about 300 or 400 pages, and I'm sure the authors want you to read every word of it, but I had no use for the theory behind the diet. I just wanted to know what I was supposed to eat and what I wasn't. From what I could tell, it basically came down to no bread, no potatoes, no rice.

Well, I'm a meat lovin' man, so I figured this diet wouldn't aggravate me too much. And, actually, it hasn't. Except for one thing. I have always loved the sandwich. I would say that the sandwich is my favorite thing to eat, be it a hamburger, a hoagie or a hero. Sandwiches, of course, have bread as one of their main ingredients. Initially I substituted lettuce leaves for the bread, and that worked okay for a while. But I grew impatient with the process of peeling the leaves off the head of lettuce. The damn things kept ripping and I'd find myself virtually shredding an entire head of lettuce just to get two suitable leaves for my sandwich. So now I've settled on just eating the stuff that goes in the middle of the sandwich. I have by no means been a South Beach saint--I still have the occasional piece of pizza (I have two kids, age 14 and 9, so ... there's pizza), and once in a great while a donut (they haven't found a way to make those out of lettuce, thank the Lord in heaven)--but somehow I have managed to plummet to 190 pounds. I haven't been that weight since I was in college. When I first saw that number on the scale a couple of months ago, I was ecstatic. Gil's reaction? "Let's get you down to 185."

The Workout

As I've mentioned before, I've always been reasonably athletic and kept myself in pretty good shape. Over the last 15 years or so, I've always tried to do at least the minimum amount suggested by those doctors and surgeons who make it their business to tell the rest of us how much we need to exercise to keep the Reaper at bay. Thirty minutes of cardiovascular training each day, another half hour of weight lifting three times a week, that sort of thing. I'd give them their minimum and not a tick of the clock more. And why the hell not? I'm a writer, they should be glad I'm getting out of my chair at all.

Turns out the minimum was not adequate preparation to dunk. I will never forget my first workout with Gil, my Dunk Dreams trainer. Not because it was so exhilarating but because it damn near killed me. I remember it as the single most physically demanding thing I've ever done. It began innocently enough: we jogged slowly for about five minutes, we jumped rope over an imaginary rope, we hopped and skipped through a velcro ladder Gil had laid down on the grass. And then we started jumping. I don't know about you, but I'd never really thought of jumping as all that physically demanding. And truth be told, one jump isn't. But 150 of them are. And some of those jumps were done straining against straps buckled over the tops of our shoulders. Gil said this contraption was invented by Russians. Perhaps early in their space program they were trying to jump to the moon.

More jumping followed. Jumping like a kangaroo for 25 or 30 yards, two foot jumps over a set of five hurdles, quickly jumping side to side over a rope held by Gil and one of his nephews. I realize that if one is going to dunk, jumping is a logical exercise, but God almighty enough already. I should have counted my blessings with the jumping, because what followed was much worse.

Here I am in the park, under
the supervision of Gil and his
nephew K.P.

We had been doing all this exercizing in a park, a very lovely park with several rolling hills. Hills are nice as long as you don't have to run up them. Then they become instruments of torture. Gil led us to one of these hills and ordered us to sprint to the top. Sprint. Not run. Sprint. It was about 75 yards to the top of the hill. It is my vow in this blog to never exaggerate the facts for effect. So you can trust me when I tell you that the hill was also no more than two or three degrees shy of vertical. At first glance it appeared that the only way to scale this hill would be with a pick axe and cleats. But were we given such tools? No. We were asked to sprint up the incline in only our Nikes and shorts. Which we did. Somehow, I made it all the way to the top, slowing down considerably by the time I reached the crest. We were allowed to walk back down to the bottom. Once there, we were instructed to sprint up the hill again. However, this time we would do so while dragging another dunk dreamer behind us, attached by huge rubber bands. To give you an idea of the size of these things, imagine the rubber bands that would come wrapped around Paul Bunyan's newspaper.

I don't know if that was the last exercise in the workout, I just know it was the last one I was able to do. The guy next to me, a 16-year-old high school athlete training for his football team, vomited when he reached the top. I wasn't so lucky. I was visited by a thick, heavy nausea. Somehow I drove home, and even though the drive from the park back to my house took nearly an hour, the nausea had not abatted one inch. I crawled onto the couch in our downstairs office and stayed there for hours. My wife and children were concerned for my health. They should have been worried for my sanity. Two days later I met with Gil to do the whole thing over again.

You Want to Do What?

When you decide at age 50 to dunk a basketball for the first time, you have to expect to take a certain amount of crap. I have taken a little, but, honestly, not nearly as much as I was expecting. My neighbor has been the worst offender. He likes to needle me by constantly asking if I’ve dunked yet when he knows damn well I haven’t. This routine amuses him tremendously. What amuses me is that my neighbor is prematurely bald.

My closest friend, John, whom I’ve known since high school, was not as supportive as I would have liked. At least not at first. At UCLA, which we also attended together, he majored in kinesiology, and when I told him I wanted to dunk, he reacted initially with a very swift, “It can’t be done.” Something about me being too old to develop the necessary fast-twitch muscle fibers. I didn’t know how to respond to this. John is, after all, a close friend (notice the subtle downgrade from “closest”), there’s a good chance he knows what he’s talking about, and he still has all his hair. To John’s credit, however, he soon picked up on how important this is to me and immediately began backpedaling. He is now firmly in my corner and once again my closest friend.

In attempting to do something like this at my age, it helps to have a wife who is understanding and patient. While we’re at it, let’s throw in beautiful, and now we have an accurate description of my lovely wife, Linda. This is her.

See what I’m talking about, fellas? The Dunk Dreams workouts tend to be lengthy and numerous, so Linda has been called upon to be incredibly flexible. She has answered the bell every time. Only occasionally have the cracks shown, such as the time I spent basically the entire day driving to and from San Clemente (over three hours round trip from our house) to workout with Gil, my trainer, on the Super Cat, a big beast of a machine used for squats and jump squats. She jokingly accused me of loving Gil more than I do her. I’m fond of Gil, but there is a line neither of us is willing to cross.

Now, there have been some benefits to Linda in all this. For one, she enjoys what the Dunk Dreams workouts have done to my body. It is, she says, lean and toned, without being obnoxiously bulky like a body builder’s. (In this, she knows whereof she speaks; she used to be an editor for “Shape” magazine, published by Joe Weider, who introduced her to a pre-“Terminator” Arnold.) Also, I think she appreciates that of all the ways a 50-year-old man could chase after youth, I have chosen something relatively unharmful to a marriage.

Nonetheless, I have found the quality of her support very moving. She’s really rooting for me. She has applauded my progress, rubbed salve into my sore muscles and never once scoffed at or belittled my quest; and, let’s face it, wanting to dunk is definitely scoff-worthy. She didn’t even laugh when I told her that when I finally do dunk, Gil is going to get us both on Oprah. Maybe it’s our 26 years together, or some kind of womanly wisdom, but she seems to have crawled inside my head and really understood as no one else has what this means to me. It has reminded me yet again--as if I needed reminding--why I fell in love with her in the first place.

Then again, maybe she just wants to meet Oprah.

A Proper Guide

At the age of 50, I decided I wanted to dunk a basketball. Something I had never been able to do before. If I was going to do this, I would need help. A personal trainer, someone to help get my legs--and the rest of me--in the proper shape to get me airborne. Now, I’ve always been reasonably athletic--Little League, Pop Warner football, my high school tennis team, that sort of thing--and I’ve always worked out. At least ever since 8th grade gym class. At the beginning of that year we were introduced to weight training, and the coach arranged us in groups of four according to our strength. I ended up on a mat with the violinists and the bug collectors. Needless to say I went straight home, retrieved my oldest brother’s weight set from the garage and started lifting. I was determined to get pumped up and bumped up to a beefier group. And thus began a lifetime of three-day-a-week workouts.
Nonetheless, I was in no shape to dunk. Luckily, right around the time of my 50th birthday, the Health section of the Los Angeles Times featured just the man who could help make me fly: Gilbert Thomas, proprietor of a little enterprise he calls Dunk Dreams.


Gil Thomas

In the article, Gil claimed to have the wherewithal and the know-how to turn any average Joe into a bona fide slam-dunking machine. Still, I hesitated calling Gil because at age 50, I thought I might be more of a below-average Joe. I feared that as soon as I revealed my advanced age, he would say, “Take another look at that picture of me in the L.A. Times. Am I wearing a sorcerer’s hat?” As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. At my first workout with Gil, not only was I the tallest, but among the other dunk dreamers were two lovely college girls from Hong Kong, a couple of Korean fellows from UC Riverside and a 30-year-old from Bangladesh. A handful of Asians and a 50-year-old white guy. Clearly, Gil is not a man who shrinks from a challenge.
Indeed, Gil is relentlessly upbeat. But he’s not all cheerleader about it. Gil just likes to tell people what’s possible. “In two more months, you’ll be squatting 300, 400 pounds.” “By the end of summer, you’ll be grabbing the rim.” And then before you know what’s happening, he’ll lift up your shirt, poke at your stomach muscles and tell you how close you are to a six pack. He’ll even summon one of his nephews over to take a look and verify the prognosis. The overall effect is remarkable. I often find myself leaving workouts with Gil feeling as though I could do anything. His knowledge of workout machines and regimens is encyclopedic, and his passion for the dunk infectious. Lately, Gil has been tell me that if--pardon me, when--he gets me to dunk, the two of us will end up on Oprah. And I’ll be damned if he doesn’t have me believing it, too. Gil Thomas and his amazing 50-year-old Dunking Man. Stay tuned.

[check out these videos of Gil: on the CBS evening news (cbsnews.com/stories/2007/02/15/eveningnews/main2483713.shtml?source=search_story) and on public television (on YouTube, search for "dunk dreamin"].

The Journey Begins

I want to dunk. A basketball. Through an honest-to-goodness, regulation-height, 10-feet-off-the-ground basketball hoop. “Okay,” one might say, “go ahead and do it. What’s the big goddamn deal?” All right, here’s the thing. First of all, I’m white. And if you don’t believe that puts me at a disadvantage, quick, name all the white guys who have ever won the NBA’s slam-dunk competition. Or more to the point, name all the white guys who have even participated in the NBA’s slam-dunk competition. Second, I am 6-feet, 1-inch tall. Taller than the average American male, to be sure, but compared to people who dunk basketballs for a living, that’s quite short. Five inches shorter than Kobe Bryant, seven inches shorter than LeBron James, 10 inches shorter than Kevin Garnett.


Even with my arms stretched as high as they can stretch, I only reach to 7-feet, 10-inches. That means I’d have to jump 26 inches just to touch the rim. To get high enough to dunk, I’d have to add another six to eight inches on top of that. That means I’d have to get my body 34 inches off the ground--nearly three feet--if I wanted to dunk a basketball. The average vertical leap for NCAA Division I basketball players is between 27 and 30 inches. That means I would have to jump higher than your average big-time college basketball player. Division I. These are the guys who go on to play in the NBA. Also, it’s not as if I can rely upon some long dormant muscle memory. I have never done this before. Never dunked. So what have we got? I’m white, I’m 6-foot-1, I’ve never done this before, and, oh yeah, I’m 51. Years old. And now we are getting to the reason why I wanted to do this in the first place.
This quest started when I was 50, an age at which one is confronted with the fact that one is most likely closer to the day he will die than he is to the day he was born. I awoke one morning to the realization that I am sliding down the hill, and at the bottom is a great big hole just waiting to swallow me up. No more Mike Teverbaugh. Bye-bye. My reaction to that: no fucking way. I was going to turn around and start running back up that hill. Or, at the very least, believe that I was. I knew it wasn’t likely that I would find something to actually reverse the aging process, or even that I would start doing things to prolong my life. You know, like eating healthy foods, reducing stress or becoming an adulterous comedian (Bob Hope, George Burns and Milton Berle all lived to be a hundred, or damn close to it; there must be some connection). No, my best hope was to find something that would make me FEEL as though I were still on the north side of the slope. I can’t change physical realities or the limitations of the human body, but I can trick myself. I can make myself believe things that aren’t true just to make myself feel better. It sounds awful, but we all do it. It’s the inspiration for the comb-over (“I’m not bald!”) and the ridiculously young second wife (“I’m her age!”). I have too much hair and too much love for my wife to make either of those options work, so I needed something else. To actually feel in my bones the surge of youth, the promise of countless more days to come, I would have to … make my body do something it had never done before. Then I could say to myself, “Look, you’re not breaking down, you’re breaking new ground.” Yes. I like sentences about myself that have the word “new” in them.
So, what would this thing be? It couldn’t just be some crazy stunt like jumping out of a plane. Hell, you can throw a sack of wheat out of a plane; that doesn’t make it young, vibrant and immortal. It would have to be some act of physical prowess, something that says, “This body, the temple of this soul, is still in the game, and it’s nowhere near halftime.” I thought of running a marathon but then quickly dismissed the idea. I mean, wow, talk about drudgery. Dragging myself around some course for nearly four hours. I’ve tried running the treadmill, riding a stationary bike and believe me, none of that endurance crap is tolerable unless you’re watching TV. And in your average marathon, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to strap a set to my forehead. Besides, old people run marathons. I’ve seen them. Emaciated, wrinkled, sunken cheeks--this is not the image of youth I was looking for. I would need something that requires power and speed, and it would be nice if it also came with an in-your-face, take-that, I-can-kick-your-ass attitude. You know, all the things we associate with youth. And that is why my mind turned toward the dunk. In all of sports, nothing else combines the athleticism and the attitude of the dunk. The dunker soars above everyone else and then slams the ball back in their faces. It’s an incredible release, the ultimate exclamation point, punctuated not by a period but a fist. And it’s completely unnecessary. One could simply lay the ball in the basket. But the dunker dunks for one reason--because he can.
For my purposes, the dunk easily surpasses other iconic acts of sport, such as the home run or the touchdown. Sure, I could join some city league team and hit a home run or score a touchdown--two other things I have never done--but what would that prove? That I could “go yard” against Bob, the checkout guy from the supermarket, or that I could sprint for a TD by outrunning Ted from accounting? Big fucking deal. But the dunk is different. To dunk, one has to hurl one’s body up at the same 10-foot hoop the pros jam it through. To dunk is to legitimately lay claim to some small percentage of similarity to LeBron James, Carmello Anthony, Michael Jordan and Dr. J.

LeBron James.............Dr. J....

Me

You can say with a straight face and a sure finger on the polygraph machine that you can do something those guys can do. There’s your surge of power, of youthfulness, of invincibility. There’s your goddamn fountain of youth. And by God I am determined to drink from that spring--greedily. For me, this has become a case of dunk or die.
In the days that follow, I will chronicle everything involved in achieving this goal--the excruciatingly difficult workouts, the aches and pains, the setbacks. I haven’t dunked yet, but I will. You’ll see. We’ll get there together