My inner DJ Tanner

We all need a little guidance in our lives. We need that thing, that thing that resonates deep with in us. For some people it’s the Torah or the Talmud, for others it’s the Quran, and still others use the bible to teach them life lessons and give them guidance. People find so much reliability in these teachings, and can see a reflection of themselves. I too have a guiding force. A body, or bodies of work that are so relatable that my soul finds comfort almost every word projected out to me. Everything I know and believe can be traced to 1 of 3 shows. 3 shows that are leading me to salvation and peace.

-         -  Full House (only “Full House”, get the fuck out of here with this “Fuller House” BS)

-          - Saved By the Bell

-          - Facts of Life (Obviously)

For instance, I had a mild diet pill addiction back in 1999-2000. This was during my 3 year period where I was actually in shape. Great shape. I lost 80lbs over a 5 month span, with an ultimate goal of losing 100lbs. I hit a plateau and found I was really struggling to lose the last 20lbs. This is when I discover Ephedrine. Holy shit Ephedrine. It was a magic pill. I can still feel the blood coursing through my veins at the mere mention of the word. When I was taking Ephedrine I could run 3 miles to the gym, lift heavy for an hour or so, and run home. I was a god damn super hero. Sure, some people died taking it, and I got so wired I would have to stand through some of my college courses because  I couldn’t physically make myself sit down… but that shit is bound to happen. My friends had many discussions with me about how they worried about my health while I was taking Ephedrine. What a bunch of daffodils. My heart might of lost rhythm a few times, but it always found its correct tempo eventually and with almost no passing out. No matter how many times they talked to me, their words fell on deaf ears. That is, until they reminded me of the plight of Jessie Spano. I can still see her spinning wildly and out of control in her bedroom, crying out the lyrics to “I’m so excited”, while Zach tried to hold her and console her. Fuck, if I had a dime for every time my resemblance to Jessie Spano saved my life, I would be a rich man. Just thinking about this has me so thankful that even though Jessie ruined “Hot Sundae’s” chance at a record deal, she may have saved my life.

I base my life on the character arcs of these three shows, and thanks to examples like the one above, I have yet to have a problem that this method of living couldn’t solve. I am a perfect mix of Jessie Spano/AC Slater/Natalie Green/Blair Warner/DJ Tanner with just a sprinkle of Uncle Joey.

I have a very important event coming up in 2 weeks. My oldest friend’s, oldest son, is getting married. This family is very important to me.  Jared Taylor and I were inseparable in jr high and high school. His first job use to call my parents’ house when they wanted Jared to come in to work extra shifts. Jared’s brother JD Taylor is the dirtiest piece of shit, but I love him like a brother too. In fact, I love this whole family. I love them so much that I gave my youngest son “Taylor” as a middle name. 10 years ago, when Jared moved to Idaho Falls, it was one of the hardest days of my life. I mourned his move the way I would mourn a death. Now that his son Dom is getting married, I am as excited for the event as if my own son was getting married. In February, Dom’s fiancé called me and asked if I would be willing to officiate the wedding, and it was one of the highlights of my life. I could not be more honored. This will be my 6^th wedding I have officiated, and it feels as though I am officiating this wedding for a member of my own family.

As I prepare for this wedding, there is so much to do.

-           - I am writing personalized vows, as I always do.

-           - I am setting up my travel to and from Idaho, and arranging my schedule so that I can take time off       work

-          - most importantly, I am starting the DJ Tanner diet.

Up to this point of my weight loss journey, I have experimented with my diet strategies. I started on keto, but found that my body was not handling it well. I was becoming very acidic and my guts hurt all day. Now I am eating lean meats, plenty of vegetation, a limited amount of grain, almost no sugar, and I count every calorie I eat. I am finding some success with this. Success that I am hoping will lead to this being my forever diet. No gimmicks, no quick fixes… just clean healthy living that is leading me to a healthy body and mind. That being said, as I prep for this wedding, I need to make a drastic leap in my weight loss. No one at the wedding will care about my weight, and I feel no pressure to be any more fit that I am. However, nothing feels better than making your best friends feel like shit. I want to make a noticeable stride in my efforts to lose weight, so I can attempt to steal the spotlight from the bride and groom, as well as make Jared and JD feel a tad shitty. I would love to see them feel really shitty, but they are soulless fucks and don’t really feel super high or low, so I will take seeing them feel “a tad shitty”. We have been friends for so long, that our bond is now made of a mutual and healthy distain for each other, and a direct mourning of each other’s successes. Oh god would I love to show up 10-12 lbs lighter. Those halfwits would be noticeably aggravated with this, and my soul would find peace in their distain.

This gives me a target to lose 10-12lbs in the next 2+ weeks, and I am open to anything that can help me get there. As we know, drastic times call for drastic measures, so I knew I was looking at a long study session in order to find my answers. Of course, by “long study session”, I meant I had hours and hours of “Saved by the Bell”, “Facts of Life”, and “Full House” reruns ahead of me. I started with “Facts of Life” for the obvious Natalie Green factor. I couldn’t imagine there wouldn’t be an episode based around Fatalie Green dropping weight to fit in. I also had the Blair Warner wild card… she was hot, but she was so vapid and egotistical, I could feel there may be a “very special episode” about Blair being anorexic, that I could glean some tips from. However, half way through season 3, during a classic Tootie fiasco, something hit me… I had an “ah ha” moment. DJ TANNER FACED THIS VERY PROBLEM…. Maybe the help I need is contained in her exploits. I instantly aborted from my “Facts of Life” haze, and began my search of “Full House episodes” with a newfound fire in my heart.

The answer to my prayers was found in Season 4, episode 8. The aptly named, “Shape up”. Even the title of the episode screams, “hope”. During the episode, DJ’s rag a muffin of a best friend, “Kimmie Gibbler”, is planning her birthday party, and decides on a pool party. A pool party!!!??? Leave it to punk ass Kimmie Gibbler to look out only for herself. Kimmie knows that DJ Tanner is not bathing suit ready. What is DJ supposed to do? I will tell you what she is supposed to do. DJ, our hero, is supposed to binge diet and work her ass off at the gym, that’s what. This was my ah ha moment. Why didn’t I think of this before? In times of trouble, I need to start with “WWDJTD” (What would DJ Tanner Do). I will tell you what she would do, she would work herself out to the point of exhaustion, pass out, and fall off her exercise bike, like a fucking champion! She sustained herself on a diet of mostly foliage and water, and exercised 3 times a day. Jesus, I wish I had her will power. I am no DJ Tanner, but I am trying to be.

So this gives me two weeks and 4 days before I see my oldest and closest friends. People I love as if they were my own blood. 2 weeks and 4 days to drop as much weight as I can in order to rub shit in their dumb fucking faces. 18 days of the DJ Tanner diet, and I will be ready to strut into that place like a jerry curl free AC Slater, instead of a dumpy Natalie Green. My ultimate goal of course is to get my body, mind and soul in line to mix some “Beverly Hills 90210” into my life coaching. However, in my current condition I am way to Andrea Zuckerman to be using “Beverly Hills 90210” as a life track. I will incorporate this show when I have a bit more Steve Sanders in me. My ego cant take being Andrea Zuckerman, that fucking geek.. but until the day when I can find my inner Steve Sanders, Uncle Jessie take the wheel.

C-inco Burrito

I need more self-reflection in my life. I am a silly man. I tend to be too aloof and lack focus. I work so hard to eliminate my issues surrounding food, that sometimes I lose my inner fire. Growth occurs where need exists. I can sometimes become overly self-satisfied, which is odd for a man whose baseline setting is to be self-loathing. What an amazing juxtaposition. Do I hate myself or look down on other people today? Or both? I feel that I am using my discovery to eliminate neurosis. Maybe this is a flawed strategy.

Have you ever been listening to music, or seen something on tv that sparks a memory? Emotion begins to flood in. A deep feeling that makes you uncomfortable disturbs your calm. Do you allow it in? Do you dwell in the sadness? Do you let the emotion live and breathe? Or, do you search for something to choke that emotion away? Change the channel, hit “thumbs down” on your Pandora? Or do you sit and soak in the moment? Let the sadness overcome you, and sit and live in that place for a while? I have been struggling to find why I lack self-control. I have been working to isolate the emotions and self-destructive thoughts and eliminate them from my mind. I am sure that my health issues are mental. When I am in the gym, there is very little I cant do. My issues are not physical. My issues are related to something inside me that I am struggling to pin point. Something has to be at the root of the yo-yo nature of this struggle. This goes for most people. This is a mental journey. However, I had an epiphany. Instead of isolating and pinpointing the patterns and perceptions and doubts that have led to me having an unhealthy relationship with food, with the goal of  “eliminating” the neurosis. I should be working to recognize my issues, so I can add them to my bag of tools.

When I was a teenager I played basketball with my friends every Wednesday night at the local Mormon church. Have you ever played basketball with a Mormon? Those fuckers can ball. I don’t know this for a fact, but I have long suspected that the reason they have sacred sections of their temples, is that they don’t want the general public knowing that they hold secret basketball shooting clinics for their youth. Like a fucked up basketball sweat shop operation. It’s a religion made up of 2,000,000 pasty dudes who can shoot the 3 ball like assassins. During our games, we always had too many people show up for everyone to play. We would shoot for teams, first 6 guys to make a free throw were in the game. We played to 11 by 1's and the winner stayed on the court to play the next game. The losing team, and everyone who sat out, would shoot free throws to see who the next group of challengers would be. The one caveat was, if any team won 3 games in a row, we would all re-shoot. The idea was to keep one team from dominating the night. If a team was too good, we had to break them up. This rule always bothered me. It made me feel small. You think you’re better than me? Fuck you! We aren’t re-shooting. Stay in. Defend your court. If we want you off, we need to beat you (which, by the way, I am the world’s most average basketball player, and I in no way was capable of changing the course of events those nights). So why? Why did I give a damn? Its pick up basketball, so why do I care if we re-shoot for teams? I care because this is how I am wired. I am wired to hate being marginalized. I also feel that real progress occurs when you are motivated to work harder. Growth occurs where need exists. 

I am starting to realize that as I isolate my neurosis, I don’t think I am supposed to learn to mute their voice. I think I should be learning to change their message.

I came home from school one fall day in 7^th grade, with the knowledge that I was walking into a buzz saw. Progress reports had been mailed home, and unless my prayers that my mom get into a fender bender came true, I knew it was not going to be a good afternoon. Straight C’s. My apathy for school was about to become extremely public. I came home from school and checked the mailbox. I needed to know if I still had time, or if the jig was already up. The mailbox was empty. The wheels of doom had already been set in motion. I sauntered into the house with the broken spirit of a new inmate. My footsteps were unsure... my head was vacant. I dreaded what waited for me inside. As I entered through the front door, it was obvious that the house was empty. But how? Was this a false sense of security? If no one was home, who got the mail? I know the lord works in mysterious ways, had he answered my prayers of an accident by making the mailman die in a car accident instead of a minor fender bender I asked for to slow my moms return home? Could I be so lucky?

I sat at the table and dreaded what was coming for me. Where was the progress report? Where was the mail? Had the events already been set in motion? I needed to decompress, and that meant food. We always had snacks around… but this kind of sedation was going to require more than a little Debbie snack cake or some fucking Doritos. This was going to call for the only medicine strong enough to ease my soul, microwaved burritos, and lots of them. I spent 30 minutes working through my beef and bean prescription when my brother Jef came out of his room. He walked out with the smirk that only a nosey son of a bitch could have. That piece of shit was clearly our villain… our mail thief. He walked right past me to the refrigerator without saying a word. He did not have to speak. His self-satisfied grin said it all. Before I could set fire to him with the profanity laced tirade that was building in my mind, he started to uncoil from where he was crouched infront of the refrigerator and I could see his head appearing over the top of the door like a mean spirited prairie dog. His head slowly turned to me, and it spoke. “Ed, did you happen to have some burritos?”… Fuck… I knew where this was going. In my panic, I had worked my way through more than one beefy beany Valium. More than 2? Maybe. I knew I had gone too far. Jef knew I had gone too far. Although I knew it didn’t bear mentioning, I was 100% sure it would be mentioned.

“Yeah, I had a couple” I replied. I could tell by his look that he knew exactly how many I had eaten. “Ed, there were 5 burritos in here when I got home. Now there are zero. Did you eat… 5 fucking burritos”. This is what we call a rhetorical question. We both knew I had. Being the consummate little brother, his line of questioning was met with a sea of “mother fuckers” and “sons of bitches” as well as unyielding denial. Jef's slight unhappiness at finding we were out of burritos, was quickly being replaced by a look of pure glee. I knew something awful was coming. This is when that piece of shit dubbed me “Cinco Burrito”. That… that…well… it didn’t feel good. It was not crafted to make me feel better. I wish that this was the end of the story, but that would be too easy. This is actually when the story became a forever memory. Jef lit up as he exclaimed, “By the way, I took the liberty of opening your report card. All C’s. Well done… Cinco Burrito got straight C’s. CCCC-inco Burrito, got straight C’s”. You would be shocked at just how much mileage Jef got out of this joke. 

This was 27 years ago. 27 years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday. Having an eidetic memory has a down side to it. I remember the bad as much as the good. However, recalling this event doesn’t need to be a bad thing. We are here to grow. To learn. To evolve. You cant know where you are going without knowing where you are now. I need to learn to use these events as fuel for my fire. To propel me forward. Instead of defeating my neurosis, I need to learn to harness them and use them to my benefit. I need to mix my ability to isolate my issues with my “you think you're better than me” attitude. I don’t need to break down my instincts and remove them from the game, I need to compete with them to make me better. I need the message I get from my neurosis to morph from “you aren’t good enough” to “this is how you get better”. I need to be grateful that I understand how these events shaped me, and altered my course. So many people never learn what drives them. So many people never learn "why". I need to be grateful that I am discovering these things and understand how valuable this is. I also need to be grateful that "Cinco Burrito" never turned into "C-cup Burrito" during my soft pink doughboy later teenage years. Bullet, Dodged.