Tuna and Pickles

As an endurance athlete, I tend to pay a certain amount of attention to my diet. Now, I'm no health nut, and I enjoy my share of fast food, but I still tend to try to keep an eye on what I eat. It's because of this that myself and two of my friends got into the idea of customizing our diets.

The first diet may seem a bit unspectacular, but it has become a thing of lore here in Louisville, and had at one point developed a small following among runners whom I know. It is what myself and my friend Kris like to call the Kris and Andrew Tuna Diet. While I put my name on it, it's my friend Kris who really came up with the idea. It began when he entered the professional world and had to start packing his lunch. He came up with the brilliant idea of packing a can of tuna and bread and calling it a meal.

When I was a Junior in college, Kris and I began training together (he was coaching me at the time) and I began to look on him as something of a mentor. Midway through what was an extremely successful season for me, we had an incident. We were at the track running a pretty intense workout. At the end of the workout, I sat down for a minute to try to rest up before my cool down run. Instead of getting up, I proceeded to lay down and not get up for 5 minutes. After Kris and another runner had to literally carry me to the van to ride back to school, Kris and I sat down and had a talk.

He asked what I had eaten that day, and I answered 2 Pop Tarts for breakfast and a granola bar at about 2:00 in the afternoon. Well, Kris was livid after hearing this and gave me a lecture on my diet being crap. So he explained to me his idea of eating tuna every day at lunch, and I already knew how good it was supposed to be for runners. So the next day I went out and bought cans of tuna. Through the rest of the spring and the entire summer, I ate 2 tuna sandwiches for lunch probably 4-5 days a week. I prospered that season and had a great summer of training. When I began coaching, Kris and I pushed this tuna diet on our athletes, especially those who did not eat enough before practice.

Today, I don't eat as much tuna. For one, eating that much is bad for you. Secondly, I work with a tuna-smelling employee and it sickens me. I don't think I'll be able to eat tuna for a long while now, but it will start again, especially when I begin running seriously once again.

Reminiscing about this tuna diet reminds me of one other crash diet a friend of mine once tried. The same semester I chose to stay up 101 hours, one of my roommates decided he wanted to lose weight. He didn't have a particular plan except to cut down on his calories. One day, out of the blue he was looking at a pickle jar and realized each pickle had roughly 30 calories. Well, this set off a light bulb in his head. He LOVED pickles and decided this would be his new diet. In what officially became known as Doug's pickle diet, my roommate began eating NOTHING but pickles. His goal was to last 2 weeks and see if he lost weight.

He would eat 2 pickles in the morning and several throughout the day. If he ever got tired of pickles and wanted a dessert food, he ate a sweet pickle. Now, I thought my 101 hours was a serious test of will power, but the fact that Doug lasted almost 4 days on this pickle diet is absolutely stunning in my mind. Eventually he could not even fathom the thought of eating another pickle. In the end, Doug didn't lose any weight, and likely consumed enough sodium to last a year, but this was just another legendary tale from Petrik 105 that will live in infamy.

Whatever Happened to Dolph Lundgren?

If you would ask any of my friends, they would tell you that I am an 80's fan. Period. Now, in our country, there are hundreds of thousands...probably millions of people who can claim the same thing. So I don't think I'm special or unique, or anything of the sort. I DO think that I'm a TRUE 80's fan, as I enjoy all aspects of the culture of that decade. I always hate people who claim to be fans of 80's music because they like 2 Poison songs (generally "Every Rose Has It's Thorn and "Something to Believe In") and 3 Guns 'n Roses Songs. Half of these people probably don't even know the group who wrote this music. So if you're going to claim to be a fan of something, do your research.

Now I'm not the most fluent in the culture, but I am pretty intelligent, and my area of expertise is 80's movies. While there are still hundreds of them I haven't seen, there are hundreds that I have seen and can quote verbatim. I am one who corrects someone when they misquote an 80's movie, even if they just missed the quote by one word.

So where am I going with all this? Well, just look at the damn title of this post and you'll understand. One of the great villains from any 80's movie is Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. He's also one of the most quotable, when you measure this by the percentage of lines that you can quote from one character. His percentage: 100% (at least his English lines). "I must break you," "If he dies, he dies," "To the end," He is not human, he is like a piece of iron," (that last one isn't even said in English, but it's still quotable. So basically, I'm saying that Dolph Lundgren really did a lot with a little. He made you absolutely hate this character while speaking roughly 7 lines the entire movie.

So wouldn't an actor of this extensive talent warrant Oscar nods, red carpet coverage, and other leading roles. Well, Dolph got some other leading roles: In 1987 he fulfilled a lot of kids' dreams by scoring the role of He-Man in "Masters of the Universe." He also had leading roles in such movies as "I Come in Peace," and "Universal Soldier" (alongside Jean-Claude VanDamme). He then faded into obscurity, securing roles in smaller films that did not get much press, with the exception of "Johnny Mnemonic."

So, what has happened to him since 1995 and "Johnny Mnemonic"? Well, he's now gone into directing. He's been billed as director of "The Defender", "The Mechanik" and "Diamond Dogs." Now, I'm not one to criticize, but He-Man doesn't belong on the Director's chair. He needs to be right there in the action, busting skulls and shooting up villains (or good guys, depending on his role). He would have made a great villain to Shwarzenegger's Terminator in any of those movies. Or he could have played the new Terminator in Terminator 4, yes they're making another one. But I guess he has a right to hang up his boxing gloves, Power Sword, and guns and step behind the camera to make his own films. But I have to say, Drago was just Lundgren's second role in a film and he played it so well that I would have expected much more out of such a promising career. But I guess I'll have to live with, "I must break you" as my favorite Lundgren quote because there probably aren't any more coming. But thank you Dolph for bringing the Cold War and the battle between He-Man and Skeletor right into my living room in such a riveting and memorable fashion.

Like Riding a Bicycle

Did you ever notice how playing NES is just like riding a bicycle?? It seems that no matter how long I go without playing my NES (though it's never very long) I am still very good at most of the games. There have been times where I have gone months without playing a certain game and come back to tear through it like it's nobody's business. One example of this is Castlevania, a game which I consider myself to be among the best players around (but I will write more on that at a later date). Another game is Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

This game is among my top games ever and I can brag of a very good accomplishment. I have, not once but twice, beaten this game without getting hit by a single opponent. The very first time can be read about on the NES Temple site under "Tales of Greatness." The second time came quite unexpectedly. I had let a friend of mine borrow the game and did not get it back for 7 months. The reason I let him borrow the game was because I had not played it in months anyway. So when I finally got the game back, it had been probably roughly 9 months since I had last played. I picked it up while talking on the phone and proceeded to play with the phone balanced between my ear and shoulder.

After a while, I realized I had not gotten hit and my excitement began to build. The first two circuits are not difficult, but to get through them flawlessly is still a good sign. After I had disposed of second Bald Bull I knew something bid was happening, and my excitement began to grow even more. Second Don Flaminco soon fell with no offense and I began to get nervous. This is the stage of the game where you must begin to take it very seriously. Though I was excited, I continued to talk on the phone as my #1 contender's bout with Sandman began. For only the third time in my life, I disposed of Sandman without being hit and I knew this thing really may happen.

My title bout with Macho Man was hardly memorable. If not taken seriously, he can get in a cheap punch and end my hopes of a perfect game, but alas I knew my foe too well and disposed of him with no problem. At this point, my excitement finally go the better of me. I suddenly yelled into my phone, "I'll call you back" and quickly hung up.

My bout with Tyson was about to begin and I was ready to once again make history. The first 1:30 passed without me getting hit by a knockout blow and I had gotten some solid jabs in on Tyson. I knocked him down in the first round and entered the second ready for victory. By this point my body was shaking with excitement. I knew I had to TKO Tyson in the second round because he is unpredictable in the third round and I would be unlikely to avoid every third round punch. Fortunately for me, Little Mac was up to the challenge. His feet were swift and his punches solid and before the bell rang to end the second round, I had TKO's Mike Tyson flawlessly. I threw the control on the ground and jumped up in celebration. I was once again the king of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

If you are interested in seeing a video of the first time I did this, back in January of 2000, check out my Youtube video.