Steve Ogden Music

Pants on the ground
Pants on the ground
Lookin’ like a fool
With your pants on the ground

These are the lyrics which form the basis for a very popular video making the ‘net rounds currently.

Above is the version done by American Idol hopeful Larry Platt. I’m given to understand this is an original song by Mr. Platt, and he certainly had an original delivery of the song, a style all his own.

Next, a version of the song by Neil Young… or rather Jimmy Fallon doing a spot-on impersonation of Mr. Young singing Mr. Platt’s song. Note how different the song is with just a little change in delivery.

For the past few months, I’ve been in training. I’ve been running an increasing amount pretty much every day – inside on the treadmill if it’s too cold or rainy, and increasingly outside if the temperature is over 50. OK, 45. OK, 42.

People see me trudging along and ask me what I’m in training for. Life, I guess. I had fallen out of training for a bit.

I began with a mile.

I used to think that was a long distance, and before you laugh, you should know I was a sprinter in high school. My event was the 100 meter, and I was pretty fast. So, I have considered myself a sprinter, not a marathoner, for a long time. However, as these things usually go, I was fooling myself. In actuality, I had become neither a sprinter nor a marathoner, because high school was a very long time ago indeed. What I had become was, of course, was a lazy fat slob.

So, I’d run a mile and be completely out of breath. I’d cough if I breathed in too deeply. As a singer, this is a bad, bad thing. If you can’t breathe properly, you can’t sing well either.

I am currently running three and a half miles a day. This now seems long to me, but remember how I used to think a mile was long? This too shall pass.

I’m not an entirely fat slob anymore, and I can breathe a lot better. And it’s been very good for my singing, which is nice.

Most of all, if feels good to be in training.