Filed under: Uncategorized
That is all. We’ll see how this goes.
This made my day the other day (well parts of it, the first 10sec are really dumb):
Filed under: madison, music | Tags: hold steady, july, madison, majestic theater
My birthday has now moved 9 days to July 10th because the Hold Steady are playing at the Majestic here in Madison. Friday + July + Majestic = perfect setting for that band in my mind.
I already have my pre-sale tickets. I’m sure that they’ll sell out.
This song has been stuck in my head recently after it came up on a Pandora playlist while I was at work:
(Another ridiculous video)
It sounds like a mix between Metric and M83.
Filed under: music | Tags: bat for lashes, daniel, help i'm alive, metric, music
A few great new songs. It’s been a good year so far for bands with female vocalists.
Both of these songs have an airy, moody, and mysterious feel.
Metric – “Help I’m Alive”
(see other Metric if you enjoy Emily Haines’s voice, but especially Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl”)
Bat for Lashes – “Daniel” (this video is kinda dumb, sorry, but the song is quite good)
A friend of mine from Chicago visited me the other weekend. I made him run hills with me -there happens to be a good one about mile from where I live over on Putnam Road. Sprinting bottom to top, it takes over a minute… so it’s a decent workout. We had done this about four times through when a lady gardening outside a house starts talking to us:
“Let me know if you guys want water!”
“That’s four times already that you’ve done that. You sure you guys don’t want some water?”
As we are running back home my friend says: “I love Wisconsin”
Although I haven’t been able to run as much as I would’ve liked lately, I feel that I’ll be able to do the madison marathon at a solid pace. Yesterday, I ran 14 miles (from my parents’ house in Milwaukee to the Art Museum and back) keeping about a 7:06 pace. Overall, it felt really good, except for the last mile or so. That means that I’ll have to start doing more 14+ mile runs just get my legs used to the longer distance so that they can handle another 12 miles. Also, it will help to have water and food with me. I brought a Clif bar along yesterday and that certainly helped.
I’ve watched more movies than lately. This is partially because the Wisconsin Film Festival was in town two weeks ago, but not necessarily the only reason.
I recently watched City of God about slum life outside of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. The movie was excellent: the videography, the story, and music all came together quite nicely. I enjoyed how they explained the life of the narrator and his situation through short biographies/stories of other City of God citizens. While the story seems to be about the narrator, Rocket, it is really about the ability of the slum to create success and destroy it in its various forms. Everything came together in the story to balance hope, reality, and pain.
I was very excited to see JCVD when it played as a part of the Wisconsin film festival. I had seen previews -it’s tapping into meta-fiction had me a bit excited. The premise: a movie about Jean Claude Van Damme as a washed up actor getting sucked into a hostage situation, starring none other than Jean Claude Van Damme himself. Not only is it commentary about his life as an actor, it blurs the line between his actual life and his action movies, but… it’s still a movie. Sounds like an excellent idea. Well, I wouldn’t know how it was. Why? Well, it was a midnight showing, and I had gone out with friends for a while beforehand. So I fell asleep about 10 minutes into the film and woke up promptly at the credits. It seems as though the general consensus was “great idea, poorly executed.” I’ll probably get it on Netflix.
I went to the Bad Plus show last night at the majestic theater in Madison. Overall, they were excellent (except a forced-sounding cover of Nirvana’s “Lithium”). Their ability to work with their instruments always impresses me -Dave King’s drum playing, with his goofy smile, is a show by itself.
Have a look:
I was talking to someone the other day about plans after work. I mentioned that I needed to get a run in before they’d pick me up to go out. I explained that I have a marathon coming up at the end of may and need to run as much as possible when I’m home to balance that with my travel schedule for work.
The comment made went something like this: No offense, but you really don’t have the build for Marathons, you’re a bigger guy (I’m 6′, weigh about 185lbs, and consider myself in good shape, exercising 5-6 days a week). Have you ever seen how skinny and small marathoners are?
I did take a bit of offense. My response to this is, yes the people that win marathons generally aren’t that tall and are extremely skinny. This is the body type that will help you win a marathon; however, marathon competitors have all sorts of body types (and sometimes even ridiculous costumes).
I’m not trying to win the race. I just want to run the 26.2 miles and do well. My ideal goal would be to qualify for the Boston Marathon (which would require pacing a 7:15ish mile), but that might not be possible with the amount of travel that I have to do for work. I’ll be okay with finishing within a decent time – I can pace an 8 minute mile in my sleep.
What I’m trying to do requires discipline and the right state of mind, not worrying about whether I have the correct body type.
I think the philosophy of this extends to life in general: yes, there will be limitations to what you can do, but how do you deal with them or overcome them?
