Plague of Strength

I’d kinda experimented with these on Facebook, which I suppose I should go and curate before I forget about them altogether, but I decided to do quickie bios semiweekly on Instagram to just give snapshots of people. I’m doing combinations of people who are sidebars in the articles I’m writing and people about whom I’m writing for the site or have written about, since people seem to prefer short formats and I seem to have developed some kind of severe hypergraphia. So, if you want, you can follow my Instagram and do all that. I’ll add a button when I can be fucked to do it, which is not at this moment. I don’t take many pics of myself or film myself lifting much, as that’s never really been what I’m about and despise doing so- it’s mostly just going to be random lifter bios, bands I’m currently listening to and the like.

Thus far, there are only three on Instagram (I’ve gotta pull the FB ones and move em over), but if you guys are hungry for content, there’s plenty more on the way- I run across far too many cool people in my research not to mention more of them.

• Vic Downs (about whom I am currently doing a Patreon-only article)
• Val Vasilieff (most of this one came from his sidebar in the last Poole article)
• Eddie Giuliani, who was one of Arnold’s crew in Venice

There’s genuinely no rhyme or reason to them, so I’ll just post them as I see fit. Most of them will be in some way training related, but some of them will just be cool people, because there’s more to life than just lifting.

Lest anyone be overly concerned about my perceived new political aims I’m not a particularly political person, so the worst you’re going to have to endure on this site as a general rule is shit like the Harold Poole series. Nevertheless, my Instagram is neither a shrine to myself nor any kind of political platform- at its most political it’ll get on Instagram would be pics of Tara and I making and distributing food for a charity we work with (which we’re calling Feed the People at this point, as no one’s terribly concerned with naming the thing), which is really just a people getting high as fuck and delivering meals from restaurants, weed activist and all-around rad bro NJ Weedman‘s dope munchies cafe NJ Weedman’s Joint, and our kitchen (the girls all get together and cook shit in our cramped little 105-year old kitchen) to people living in the shitty motels in our area.

If you’ve ever stayed in one of those shitty motels, that’s basically the last step before you go full homeless, and it fucking sucks. We don’t give a fuck how they got there and aren’t there to do shit other than help them out, so don’t go thinking that pussy Nietzsche’s thinking applies to my actions at all. Shit happens and people end up on hard times, so we go and hang out and give them some tasty food with no moralizing or string attached, then hang out bullshit with them a bit, since most of them are probably pretty much handicapped by loneliness. And we’re a weird-ass bunch of dogooders- there are a couple of wildly industrious teenage hippies, a dude with a thin blue line sticker on his pickup who rides pro motocross and competes in pro cookoffs, Tara and myself, and a rotating crew of people who just show up and help out whenever they can.

If you live in the Trenton, NJ area, feel free to hit me up if you want to come hang out and slang some wings and shit with us.

In other news, I’m going to be playing the lead in an upcoming Splatterhouse short film produced by [I think] Screenwave Media based on the nine-panel comic-style ad that was an insert in comic books in the 90s, so there’ll be shit about that on the Insta and pics and all that shit as well. I don’t have a ton of information beyond what I’ve provided, and Newt Wallen (who I interviewed here) is directing it, so it’s definitely going to be blood-soaked enough to give Lucio Fulgi a decomposing semi.

Though we’re still in the process of looking for a meet to do together, Anthony Fuhrman and I are going to plan to do a meet together in strongman in the u200 division. He’s the 2018 and 2019 105kg/231lb Strongman Champions League champ who jumped up to the open before tearing his bicep, so he’s back down in the 220s. Thus, depending on his weight, we are hoping to go head to head in a meet that involves as little loading as possible, as I’m a dwarf and he just fucking hates loading. In any event, if we can put it together it should be pretty rad to see two dudes with very different builds and backgrounds battling in a competition somewhat out of both of our wheelhouses.

If you don’t know of the dude, he’s cool as fuck- he’s a professional 105kg strongman, has won multiple world titles in strongman, has taken two silvers at Americas Strongest Man, as he describes it “generally the best dancer at any competition,” Sgt 1st Class in the US Army and member of its Warrior Fitness Team, a man who got to meet the Rock when he was on the Titan Games, and is one of the few people I know in strength sports with whom I get along at this point. If you want, you can read an article here wherein he details the curious case of the 105kg strongman. Frankly, I don’t really give a fuck about weight classes in strongman and am generally of the mindset that they’re silly as shit, but it’s an opportunity to have throw some weight around with a dude I respect and see who comes out on top. If and when we decide on one I will announce it so we can all mob the thing and turn it into a proper circus.

Whether or not that happens, I tapped Anthony and a female Highland Games competitor to work on a podcast, but frankly none of us have the time to devote to more free content generation at the point. That said, should I ever become independently wealthy or lose both hands or eyes in an industrial accident there will be an actually scripted Plague podcast at some point. As there is literally zero chance I’ll become wealthy, those of you who are dying for a LPOTL-style cultural lifting history podcast will have to hope I’m either blinded or maimed while working at Amazon or beating down armed illiterates in the coming election season.

As to what’s on deck articles-wise, I’ve got the following on page one of eleven pages of articles still under construction.

• a Patreon-only article on ultra-diced bodybuilder Vic Downs, who Weider fucked out of the 1967 Mr Universe to hand the trophy to Sergio Oliva because Vic didn’t like Weider’s shitty soy protein
• an article about Bill Seno, another Poole contemporary who was an early bench press phenom as well; and an article about how bare-knuckle boxing was the foundation of the beef in the movie Gangs of New York
• You Think This Is Really About Liberals and Conservatives? It’s Really Mystics Versus Fundamentalists
• Fustigation Fury: Training To Fight From The Primeval To The Present- James Figg, Joker to Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes’ Harley Quinn, Plus Jack Broughton, Tom Sayers, and More of the Foundations of Modern Boxing (Boxing Part 1)
• Fustigation Fury X Empire Builder Diet- Fish, Chips, Cup o’ Tea, Bad Food, Worse Weather, Mary Fucking Poppins, and Training to Fight (Victorian and Georgian Era Diet and Training Methods)
• Female Catch Wrestlers, Mildred Burke, and Others (Female Fustigators 3)
• There’s also going to be an non-lifting related article about Madam CJ Walker from part one of the Harold Poole series, if for no other reason than that broad was punk rock as fuck, though I have no idea when that will drop.

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