Before You Fall Asleep Reading This...

I once read where music impresario Lyor Cohen works and stays up as late as he can until he literally cannot keep his eyes open, and can only muster enough strength to take himself to bed. Found it. Every week I read "Corner Office" in the New York Times which is an interview with a CEO of some sort. This past week's article was an interview with a woman who works for an apparel company. She says that she sometimes sleeps two hours a night. Granted, she works part time in Germany, and perhaps that's just her German efficiency kicking in, but where I come from, two hours of sleep is called a nap. But hey, she's the CEO of a multinational operation and I'm the CEO of a not-for-profit blog that attracts spam from Asians.

Now that's I've tasted what it's like to have a decent amount of personal time outside of work, I can't help but feel that I'm not utilizing it appropriately. Back in the day (like 4 or 5 weeks ago) I got home in time to eat, shower, maybe read an article or two of something not work related, curse myself a little bit, and then pass out. So what I'm thinking about doing is training myself to start keeping longer hours, and thus sleeping less. I realize that this has disaster written all over it, because my body has been known to rebel if I burn the candle on both ends. For example, I have this trick hamstring, that tells me in a most painful way when I'm not hydrated enough. At first the muscle will kind of spasm, then it will go into "you think this is a joke, son" mode and hurt like the dickens. What I'm saying is that I'm fine tuned. Maybe not fine tuned, but tuned, at least, to a certain extent.

The saying goes that "nothing good happens after 2am", and I'm not saying that I'm going to start staying up until 2am, but I've gotta say, that when I do stay up after 2am it's usually because I'm out having fun. I'm not sure this saying applies to gang members though. Standing on the corner of 61st and Fifth and flashing gang signs to homeless people sleeping on the benches the border the park is a fairly innocuous activity. Move 60 or 70 blocks north and doing the same thing will probably net a different result. So perhaps in some situations nothing good ever happens after 2am. By the way, Vatos Locos for life, homes.

I'm usually in bed by 11 - 11:30, but what would happen if I just stayed up much later. You always hear about these chefs who would stay up late at night in their kitchens perfecting dishes with the help of their pet rat...or was that Ratatouille? Whatever. The point is that genius occurs as the sun comes up but during this time most of us are out cold dreaming about swimming in pools of candy or whatever other ridiculous dreams about unicorns and manifest destiny you folks are having these days. Weirdos.

All these pop/rap collaborations you see now have become so passe. If you told me Raffi just did a collaboration with Gucci Mane I'd barely bat an eye.

Oh hey there Raffi. How about singing that one about apples and bananas?

What was the first real cross-genre collaboration you can recall seeing or hearing...probably Aerosmith and Run DMC's "Walk this Way". If you for one second believe that the idea for that was conceived at an hour earlier than 2am then you are sorely mistaken. For chrissakes, in the movie Young Einstein, when a young Albert Einstein splits the beer atom with a chisel in order to add bubbles to beer, when do you think that happened? After 2am, duh? Scientific facts are irrefutable. It's true. Just ask the Texas Board of Education...wait what?

I suppose the question is this, would you sacrifice sleep and in turn be more grumpy in the morning if you knew that at night you were unlocking your sheer genius, whatever that may be?I hope you say yes, and I hope you stay up tonight and create the most badass origami Eiffel Tower the world has ever seen, or the most delicious carnitas taco the worst has ever tasted, or perhaps the most incoherent rambling blog the world has ever read. Don't take if from me, take it from a certified doctor....Dr. Bunson Honeydew...burner of midnight oil.