In November I started weight training again at the gym after almost two years off resulting from an injury. I had torn a ligament in my left arm trying to do tricks on one of my kids’ scooters; that took more than nine months to heal, and so I took up running for a while. (Including doing a marathon in Amsterdam.) But now, finally, I’m back to weightlifting three times a week. There’s still an unsettling internal twang in my left arm, but I’m trying to ignore that.

There’s a stereotype about weightlifters that they aren’t very bright. I’m not sure it’s fair, even if they do get to be governor of California. But today I wondered.

I was doing deadlifts of 75 pounds. (Pleasure remember:  I’m working my way back into this.) Three sets of 10 reps each. A guy next to me asks if I mind if he borrows one of the 45 lb weights near me so he can slot it onto his barbell. I don’t mind at all, because I’m not going to be using that 45 lb weight today, tomorrow, or any time in the foreseeable future. Then he comes back and asks if I’ll spot him. He’s getting set up to do standing barbell presses. He’s about my height (5’10”) and generally humanoid shaped — not disproportionate like this — so I’m especially astonished to see what he wants me to spot him on:  I see seven 45 lb weights on each end of the barbell, plus the 45-lb barbell itself, which leaves me quickly calculating that he’s about to lift 675 pounds.

“Can you spot me?” he asks again.

I look at him. “You do see what I’m lifting, right?” I nod in the general direction of the tinker toy I’ve been lifting. I’ve been mulling over moving up to 80 pounds, and he wants me to cover his ass if he starts to slip with 675.

“Yeah, but all you have to do is stand behind me and if I start to fall back, just push me forward.”

I have pictures of his starting to fall backward — and then succeeding, crushing me right through the floor like something out of a Looney Tune. Nevertheless, for reasons I cannot imagine, I agree to do this. So I stand behind him and he drafts two other guys to stand on each side, and all of us agree that none of us can do anything if this stunt goes haywire.

Then I notice one last thing I think I should mention.

“You sure about this? Because the barbell is bending.” Which indeed it is. I don’t know what its load capacity is, but it’s starting to look like the axle on a much-played-with Matchbox car. He decides to proceed, and I back way the fuck up because now I’m imagining shards of steel sproinging out from a shattered barbell and shooting into my eyes. He manages to get the load up off the rack and replace it twice with no problem. The third time, he’s almost unable to get the right end back into the hook and all of time slows down as three far more averagely built guys try to look useful when actually they’re panicking. But then he slots it and everyone is relieved and I go back to what I’m doing with my Minnie Mouse weight set while debating who’s stupider:  Him for attempting this feat, or us for spotting him.

Then I see him ask a girl with him to take a picture of the barbell he’s just lifted, with all the weights still on it. She dutifully takes the picture from a few different angles. I can’t resist saying to them both:

“Um, you didn’t do that right.”

“What?”

“The photos. She took photos of a barbell loaded with weights. What you wanted was a  photo of you holding the barbell loaded with weights.” When this didn’t quite sink in, I explained that I could take a picture of a car and tell people I had carried it around town, but no one would be impressed. They would want a picture of me actually carrying the car. Then he understood.

So then he asked all of us to spot him again so he could get the picture right. But everyone begged off.

Enjoy.

This video shows you can’t just go singing opera in public, or more people might start to decide they really like opera.

Some years ago I made my living as a freelance writer.

While I still make my living as a writer, this column reminds me why I’m glad I’m not counting on freelance magazine and newspaper revenue any more.

By the way, one of the low rates listed in this column comes out to six cents a word. I recall getting paid one cent  a word by The Comics Journal (or a bounteous $25 for an interview) — and constantly having to cajole and threaten to collect that.

Last night I saw “The Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call: New Orleans.” It was enormous great fun. In fact, leaving the theatre, I couldn’t remember the last time I had such a howling good time at the movies.

I wasn’t alone in this. Sometimes you’re fortunate to see a movie or play or concert with the right audience, an audience that absorbs the moment and bounces it back in the playing area, creating a feedback loop that heightens the experience. Although the screen and the theatre at the Beverly Center are small — not much larger than many living rooms, and smaller than most in Bel Air — that smaller venue probably benefited the screening. It was like a dozen Werner Herzog fans got together for a movie night. This audience laughed along with every bit of trademark Herzog weirdness and made it a better experience than it would have been watching the film alone at home.

And the movie is weird. Delightfully so. Closeup shots of iguanas are run against contextually mismatching blues music. A dead spirit breakdances. The bad lieutenant menaces uncooperative old ladies, molests spoiled young people on dates, and snorts every volatile substance in sight. Nicolas Cage’s energetic performance is literally twisted, as uses his character’s recent back injury as an excuse to hunch around the entire film like a scarecrow stuck crooked on his post. This is the most fun Nicolas Cage has had in a movie since his foray with the Coen brothers 20 years ago, and it reminds us of how much presence and promise he once had. The movie is filled with charms:  great character parts for Brad Dourif and Jennifer Coolidge and Fairuza Balk; a completely iconoclastic way to use music that would be wrong in most cases but which utterly supports and lifts every scene; and a thrilling nervy looseness that lends the entire film a sense of excitement that leaves us wondering what could possibly be next?

This movie calls to mind what great B movies used to be:  Fun; weird; unexpected. I didn’t realize I was missing that sensation until I came across it again. And here it was.

I got a Google alert that someone has added me to the Wikipedia page of “Living people.” It’s a good category to be in.

I don’t know quite how to lead in on this without just saying it:  I found out today that someone I’ve known for years in the local theatre scene was stabbed to death over the weekend in his home.

What a horrible way to die, and for such a nice man.

My three kids muscled me off the Xbox for an hour so they could play Call of Duty Modern Warfare before bedtime. You know, that end-of-night time when you want to wind down before bed.

Earlier in the day, we had come across some video games in the garage that had been lent to my older son six or eight years ago. Now, of course, whatever platform they were for (Sega Genesis? Nintendo?) is long defunct. But finding them did give my eldest the opportunity to remind me again that this long-lost neighborhood pal was sent away to military school after he got a girl pregnant.

So just now, while watching urban warfare from the individual on-screen perspectives of my three children, I brought this back up. The on-screen military action as played out by my children brought back the image of childhood military school.

Me: “So, how old was he when he got sent to military school? 15 or 16?”

Lex (aged 18): “Something like that.”

Dietrich (aged 7): “What did he get sent there for?”

Me: “He got some girl pregnant.”

Dietrich: “Oh. How did he do that?”

Me: “The old-fashioned way.”

Dietrich: “Oh. What’s that?”

Emma (aged 11, and notably somewhat prudish): “Dietrich! Can you just drop it? You’ll find out soon enough!”

Dietrich: “I just don’t know what the old-fashioned way is!”

Emma: “And let’s keep it like that!”

Given the previous neighborhood example: Indeed.

Like most people, I’m hoping that 2010 will bring a new outlook. Well, my New Year’s celebration last night did.

My wife had to work, and my older son was going to a party, and my daughter was going to a sleepover, so that meant finding something to do with my seven-year-old boy. I briefly considered our spending the night playing Oblivion on the xBox, taking turns in our assigned roles: My solving puzzles and fulfilling quests; his killing every monster and demon in sight because my somewhat older fingers are too slow to survive an altercation with an alarmed pantry cat. But then I figured that we were going to be doing a fair amount of that during the day, so instead I signed us up for a fun program run by the City of Burbank:  a midnight hike up the mountains ringing the city.

So, last night at 8, we and about 30 other people, including our friend Trey, gathered inside the Stough Nature Center. It was one of those events were almost no one knows anyone else; there was a family of four from Brooklyn, an older man and his adult son, a woman from Japan, someone from Georgia, a single mom and her little girl, a middle-aged woman with a leathery face and brilliantly dyed pink hair, and an oddly quiet blonde who kept her hood up all night even when we were inside. We played games and talked a lot and picked at the buffet and listened to music. And my son got to hold a snake and a tarantula. (Photos of which he proudly showed his squeamish sister the next day.)

At 11:30 we started the ascent up the mountain. The air was crisp and clean, with a brisk nighttime scent given off by the wild shrubs and grasses on the mountain. My wife and kids and I had hiked precisely this route five weeks earlier, on Thanksgiving weekend. It’s a wide and gently sloping path, more of a mountain walk than a hike (and certainly not a climb). About 20 minutes later, we came to a large flat rise that overlooks this entire end of the valley, where we could see countless lights from Pasadena in the east, past Glendale and Burbank with downtown Los Angeles south in the distance, and off to the west. This view was impressive during the day; at night it was spectacular.

And then, at midnight, we all made apple cider toasts and stood back and watched the fireworks. From our vantage point, we could see no fewer than six different fireworks displays simultaneously. There was one in Pasadena. There was one in Burbank. City of Los Angeles somehow found the money to do one. We saw one beyond that that someone estimated as originating by the Queen Mary, docked in Long Beach, 40 miles south of us. That’s what this view is like.

Then we all posed for a group shot with the lights in the distance and made our way back down the mountain.  I said goodbye to Mike, and gave the single mom a farewell hug, and shouted farewells to others, and my son said goodbye to his best friend for the evening, 29-year-old David who patrols the coast for a living and had a video of himself out in the water with dolphins and who has a way with people and animals.

In February of 2009, I made a personal pledge to do what I could to spread as little grief as possible in the world. Everyone was already so on edge about the economy, with day-to-day wonderings whether or not we were sliding into the second Great Depression, that I figured I’d do my best to let things slide, or be helpful in small ways. Last night’s easygoing, relaxed, and altogether different New Year’s Eve with strangers on a mountaintop at midnight may not prove as memorable as my best Thanksgiving ever, but it was a good way to cap off the year.

I’m off to a party and midnight mountain hike sponsored by my city, my youngest and our friend in tow.

Before  heading off to do that, I thought I’d make a final statement about 2009. Here it is:

We should count ourselves lucky.

Really.

Just about everyone reading this right now (about 15,000 people) is far better off than almost everyone else on the planet.

In many ways, it’s been a miserable year.  But it could’ve been worse, and I think it’s getting better.

See you next year.