Running is neu moonz

Hey.

So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed. But we’re teetering on the brink of the apocalypse. The signs are everywhere. The Afghan election was a joke. Thom Yorke has officially gone BANANAS and furthered the Mormon Teenager Celebacy Empire by including a song (hey, at least it’s a very good song) on the new Twilight soundtrack. Glenn Beck now foals a slimy baby stallion of pure, incoherent hatred every night on television while the nation cheers and drools into KFC buckets resting gently in their quivering, fatty laps. Health care reform is going the way of the dodo. Coyotes are apparently now indestructible.  Leslie, Austin’s favorite local homeless transvestite and homeless advocate, is in the hospital with brain damage and the sitch doesn’t look good. And it turns out that even the simplest joys of life–like picking your own apples–are all big Ponzi schemes, too. I feel like the Publisher’s Clearing House just knocked on my door only to burn that oversize, novelty check right in front of my eyes, then rub the ashes into my teeth. What happened to the glimmering, impossible, electric peacock-feathered hopes that so dazzled our eyes when Obama took the stage that fateful evening last November? Why is everybody unemployed? Why do we get old and wrinkly? Why do people wear rainboots when it’s raining out and they end up slipping on hilly streets anyway, because apparently there’s no tread on the bottom of those things? And why does everyone who lives in Austin look like this:

I dunno.

But somewhere, Steve Nash is probably studying a pre-algebra textbook and rocking a sweater vest, figuring out a way to save us using the Pythagorean theorem and sea algae. He probably has a lukewarm can of Diet Coke sitting on the desk in front of him.

The good news is that I’m running the Austin Marathon. According to my (and Steve’s) calculations, me running just over 26 miles on Valentine’s Day, 2010 will draw the planets back into their proper alignment. All will be right with the world again. The woodland animals looting our Circuit Cities and liquor stores will be struck dumb and mute once more, and return to their forest homes. The Democrats will retain their control of Congress. Cormac McCarthy will show up at my front door and ask to go dutch on a six-pack of New Belgium’s finest while we talk about common sentence patterns. And a new and glorious dawn will break in hushed tones over the firmanent. Somewhere, in the background, the Verve will play. Everyone will cry their guts out.

Believe me when I tell you that I’m doing this for you. Most of me doesn’t even really want to run a marathon. I don’t even like running, people. I’d rather sit around in my own filthy bedsheets, feeling the sweat pool in my kneepits and gumming fistfuls of Crisco.

But I’m going to do it, anyway.  I bought new shoes over the weekend that are bioluminescent blue. As soon as I finish wading through the quagmire of grading the rest of this week’s student essays, this web-log will again discuss important matters. Some will pertain to running (e.g. interval training suggestions, nipple creme comparison shopping, whether or not to “pick up a water moccasin with a big stick just to show it to your girlfriend–surprise!” while running through Texas hill country), and some will fall well beyond the pale of pounding the pavement (how to train a pig to hunt truffles, what kind of food is good to eat when you’re crying, Sugar Ray, where to allocate my retirement savings, etc.).

I’m back. Brace yourselves.

-The Camercorn

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Days remaining until the Austin Marathon: 110

Miles completed since I (really) began training for said Austin Marathon: 10

On my most recent running soundtrack: the frostbitten righteousness of “Freya” by The Sword

Running is lost, then found

I frequently make notes in shorthand to myself in my journal. Or on gas station receipts or  the other nasty bits of paper that inevitably fill my pockets. I started doing it in 2003 during my junior year of high school. I noticed that my short-term memory was starting to work in fits and starts, becoming increasingly unreliable. (Juvenile onset Alzheimer’s?) In addition to propping up my rotting neurons, I also use my Lil’ Notez (TM) in service of my writing.

It should be mentioned that the latter application often works better theory than in practice. Most times, when I’m trying to pull of that ascetic-artist-poleaxed-by-his-own-brilliance-which-is-why-he-absolutely-HAS-to-get-this-down-right-now-and-you-wouldn’t-understand-anyway-you-PEOPLE-you-awful-people kind of writing, I end up freezing and being unable to write about anything except what’s right in front of me. (“Tacos tacos tacos.”)

The Italian humorist Achille Campanile reportedly did most of his writing squinting at the backs of tram tickets through his monocle while riding around Rome. One can only assume he was not paid by the word.

I still haven’t figured out how to run and write at the same time. Unless somebody wants to run alongside me with a steno pad and take dictation. (Note to Wes Anderson: if there’s a sequence like the one I just described in your next movie, I’m suing.)

My system of shorthand, originally sexy yet functional, like Danish furniture, has since been so pruned over the years that it’s become a kind of Lovecraftian cipher that it occasionally baffles its inventor. (See, for example, a library fine slip from last week that bears the cryptic phrase, “kt f/mcsween(?!?).” It wasn’t until I was on the precipice of sleep later that night that I remembered that I’d meant to “buy more cat food” and “reply to that email from my friend about that really sad story about the circus elephant that might have been published in McSweeney’s, but probably wasn’t, because it was something more like Tin House, or maybe even Fence.“

Next to the Valentine’s Day entry in my running log from earlier this year, there’s a note that says, “red balloon.” Red balloon. Red balloooooonnn. What do you meannnn?! (I wrote a song.) Since I re-read the entry about a month ago, I’ve been agonizing over it like a movie archeologist who, after falling through a wall of crumbly ye olde stone while wandering off to relieve himself, accidentally stumbles into a deserted underground metropolis that seems to be simultaneously from the past AND the future.

Was I drunk and/or high, rocking out to Nena on my iPod during that day’s 7-mile trail run? Was I weighing the merits of post-Occupation French film for children? Was it some freaky Freudian reference to fears of my butt exploding like a lightning bug’s–a note which (gasp) my lower brain hastily penned without the rest of my brain even knowing about it?

Cut to the grocery store. Specifically, me in the grocery store. Today. Drama. Buying a pear and some deli salads for lunch. While staring aimlessly into the middle distance, waiting in the checkout line, I suddenly remembered. Bam.

While running through a thicket of sagebrush last February, I noticed a half-deflated red mylar balloon in the shape of a heart caught on some brush. I ran the last three miles home along the highway, feeling slightly ridiculous, with its string tied around my wrist. Passing drivers probably thought I’d just escaped from a doctor’s office, pumped full of pills, and had decided to run home. A jeep full of former students honked at me. One of them yelled, “way to go, teach!,” the tone and exact meaning of which I’m still trying to unravel.

The balloon hovered, circumspect, on my ceiling for about a week before it slowly descended to the carpet one day, which was so sad that it made me want to cry.

Which is why I’m wondering. What’s the strangest thing you’ve picked up running?

(“My husband” is not an acceptable answer, even though, I know, it’s all wakka wakka wakka, etc.)

Running is accounting

It might appear to the untrained eye that I’ve reneged on my insane promise to both write a letter and write every day for the next couple of months.

For the bean-counters (although I don’t know why you people waste all your time counting beans, when you could be counting something more exciting, like Duchovny pec-jiggles, or the number of alligator attacks on golf courses), here are my latest letter-writing activities, followed by the latest mileage update:

April 7th: Wrote sappy letter to g which would probably make you all barf mightily, as wine-soaked, Greek gods after a poorly concluded symposium, which is why I didn’t post it.

April 8th (today): Talk about a boring letter… I penned a sample cover letter for school district applications in the next couple weeks, and sent it out to my program’s recruiting coordinator for review. Booowwwwwrrrringg. Cover-letter-writing, along with resume-refining and filling out a billion dumb forms, has consumed every second of my waking life the past 48 hours like a swarm of voracious insects in the shape of one of those What Color is Your Parachute? books. I hate job-hunting. I hate interviewing, which inevitably leaves my reservoir of fake smiles (already dangerously low) depleted, and me feeling like I’ve taken a hockey puck to the throat (or “da troat,” if you’re from da U.P.). I especially hate the new, weird smell my bath towels took on over the weekend while I was gone, which makes me think a fat German Shepherd and a skunk made transgressive, interspecies love in my shower while I was gone, then toweled each other off.

Also: the new Decemberists record is awful. Just awful. I feel the same way I did when I first saw Jar-Jar Binks racism his way across the screen as a middle school student brimming with a million little glittery silver stars of hope at the premiere of The Phantom Menace.

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Days streaked: 17

Total Miles: 64.1

colonna sonora di oggi : Wolf Parade.

Running is driving yourself birdshit crazy over the perfectly engineered mixtape: #8

Mix #8: FUTURESHOCK, or the mix I swore I’d never make

Hey gang. This week’s long-percolating, shade-grown mixture of sounds is posted here with some hesitation on my part. Mostly because the bands, artists, and general ethos of the following are mostly things that I’ve spent a lot of time pretending to hate over the past few years: the vacuousness and narcissism of many scenesters and their championing of meaningless hook-ups; MySpace “friend” making, the most recent wave of indie plastic soul’s tendency to cop black rhythms and affects without giving due credit (what I like to call the “Vampire Weekend” school of reinterpretation, as opposed to a more honorable “Graceland-era Paul Simon” approach); and a general dislike of kids from south suburban Denver who are “into underground hip hop.”

(with thanks to Liz’s fecund brain on the last point)

But look here now, chilluns. I write you today happier than a walrus who’s awoken to find himself in an abandoned Van de Kamps factory. America restored my faith in her tattered ideals last night. A country whose promise is now not only possible, but demonstrable. The Obama wave has ushered in an era in which irony, aloofness, judgmental distance, and cool detachment (often veneers for deep-rooted insecurities about conformity and personal identity) are a repugnant mode de vie. While it’s often necessary to bear some degree of skepticism towards the world and the (usually awful) things that happen in it, to be an unbending cynic is both morally exhausting and intellectually lazy.

So whatever. These songs are fun and infectious and bubblier than a Eurotrash foam techno party. The people who listen to them are generally pretty allright, and most of them probably helped Obaminate the Republican party and its gay-hating, turkey gobbler-chinned cronies last night. And much of the following is hip-hop, anyway. You know. The underground kind. And because I’m feeling especially un-crotchety this week, for the first time I’m making the mix 120% downloadable for you, yes you, my gorgeous readership, to listen to while running. All of you at once. Make it happen. The fine print: I’ll probably take the link down within the week, since I don’t want stern, vaguely undead-looking east coasty lawyer goons from the RIAA showing up at my door bearing cattle prods and an S&M mask. And if you use the mix to do anything *other* than run, I’m going to know about it. And I’m going to be gravely, gravely disappointed in you. Like sad Abe Lincoln looking disapprovingly at you disappointed.

One last note: this mix is decidedly un-kid friendly. So those of you with lil’ uns’ (bless your soul!) might want to keep them away from the Outkast, Beep Beep, and Teenagers tracks, in particular (the lattermost in particular, which, uh, skewers–I hope–transatlantic flings between shallow, insipid high schoolers). Actually, much of the list, come to think of it, might not sit well with those of you who worry about your children’s moral development.

Track list and suggested listening order below.
Download Mix #8 right here.

1 / Justice – D.A.N.C.E.
2 / Spoon – I Turn My Camera On
3 / The Golden Hands Before God Conducts Incredible Magic Band & The Spirits – Communist Party
4 / The Teenagers – Homecoming
5 / Of Montreal – Don’t Ask Me To Explain
6 / Los Campesinos! – You! Me! Dancing!
7 / Siouxsie and the Banshees – Cities In Dust
8 / Outkast – Slump
9 / Beep Beep – Electronic Wolves
10 / Mos Def & Talib Kweli – Thieves In The Night
11 / The Wrens – Boys, You Won’t
12 / The Album Leaf – Brennivin

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Most recent run and atmospheric conditions: Tempo run through the blustery beginnings of a blizzard on the Steamboat Ditch

Workout/whether or not I heaved: 8-9 miles

Total Mileage to Date: 666 (those among you who’re seeing Obama’s election as a sign that the End Times are nigh can go ahead and count this among your omens)

Days remaining to Boston!!: 164

Running is transgression and errancy

I have to make two important decisions today:

1) Do I notify/reimburse my bearded, Viking Metal-loving roommate, Darryl, since I borrowed ± ½ jar of his Pace Mild and Chunky salsa. I’m normally pretty OCD about the convoluted, inter-fridge rules about whose food is whose in our household. I wouldn’t even have crossed the line, except that my waning food budget in these last, lingering days of the month before I get my paycheck (here’s lookin’ at you, Nevada taxpayers!) have led to me to inventive culinary measures employing the scanty, sad-looking contents of my cupboard. The de facto meal in these gastronomic doldrums has been a lively little number I call “pasta with peanut butter,” which is more or less exactly what it sounds like. Sometimes soy sauce is involved, too. Last night, the pasta ran out, so I cooked up my other signature, late-in-the-month dish: the “Pueblo Steelrunner,” which consists of a microwaved flour tortilla with a flotilla of black beans and lumpy bits of potato sailing atop it. The ‘runner is totally taste-impoverished without some kind of cheese or salsa propping it up. I was out of the former (cheese is wayyy too expensive for end-of-the-month criteria). And, unbelievably, I was also out of salsa. Which, let’s face it, is my personal, piquant, much cheaper version of crack cocaine.

I hope Darryl will understand. He probably won’t even notice, since that jug of salsa is bigger than a porpoise head. But I can’t stand it. The guilt is slowly ravishing my conscious, feasting on it like a giant, Puritanical polyp. As such, I’m soliciting your opinions:

2) It’s increasingly worn on me that the byline, or subtitle, of the Belfry isn’t very accurate as to whatever it is that goes on here. I don’t even run every day, so “the daily run” is misleading. And I run through sagebrush once every two weeks, at most. And running the stark, spartan, brownish hills outside of Reno is nowhere near as “spooky-ass” as running through downtown Reno at twilight. There, my friends, unspeakeable, scrotum-tightening things scorch one’s eyes and turn even the strongest woman’s heart to dribbly marmalade. (E.g., my friend Jaffney was hanging out down on 4th street one hot, dry morning when a rheumy-eyed woman in a peacock-patterned raincoat approached her out of some scummy alley, blood running out of a corner of her mouth, offering to “do anything you want for four dollars”).

(don’t do meth, guys.)

Running through even the most rattlesnake-infested sagebrush is like eating Jiffy with a spoon in a recliner while taking in “Geraldo at Large” compared to that shit. So the “spooky” moniker is inaccurate. And most of these posts have been about running in Colorado, anyway: the true spiritual home of my dusty sneakers and too-hot-to-trot Union Jack shorties. So I figure it’s time for a change.

Some of my best ideas for a replacement slogan—“Bowerman’s Belfry: Where Duchovny Happens,” and “Bowerman’s Belfry: Because You’re Worth It,” and “Bowerman’s Belfry: The Legendary Journeys of Zip the Goat”—have tenuous, perhaps nonexistent, connections with the Belfry’s subject matter. Which, for the sake of argument, we’ll pretend is running. As such, I’m opening up the forum to you. Yes, you! Everyone! Even the Googlebot (and those sketchballs who leave spam comments about “the sex photo of hot iPod young girl better wireless coverage” on seemingly every one of my posts) can participate!

How do you, dear reader, think the Belfry’s subtitle should read? The winning entry (provided that it’s penned by someone other than, well, me) gets a special prize. Which may or may not be a The Legendary Journeys of Zip the Goat lithograph that I’ma blackmail Amber into making. Which may turn out to be complicated, if Amber writes the winning phrase. Because then I’d have to blackmail her into giving a prize to herself. One that she’s spent hours working on.