The World Is a Vampire

Another Sexy Boy Vampire Playlist
Supermassive Black Hole - Muse
Bullet With Butterfly Wings - Smashing Pumpkins
Reckoner - Radiohead
Do You Want To - Franz Ferdinand
Brand New Colony - The Postal Service
The Sound of Settling - Death Cab for Cutie
Chelsea Dagger - The Fratellis
All I Need - Radiohead
Breakeven - The Script
Wake Up - Arcade Fire
No Surprises - Radiohead
Great DJ - The Ting Tings
Blue Light - Bloc Party
Mrs. Robinson (interlude) - Simon & Garfunkel
Walcott - Vampire Weekend

I think I figured out the Twilight Hate ... listening to today's playlist - which was generated by the GENIUS feature of iTunes - I realized that today's plump and balding Gen X-er's are hellapissed that vampires are no longer GOTH. I mean, vampires pre-existed Goth culture - Goth was an offspring of vampire culture, to be sure - but any mother can produce varied children. Today's "vampires" descend not from Peter Murphy and and Poopy Z. Brite, but from a different branch of the family tree.

From the bourgeois, from white trash, from America - not Europe. They are no longer pretentious. They are the kind of ordinary embraced by, well, Sarah Palin supporters. They aren't special. They are repressed. They are Puritan.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Distance: 6.15 miles
Temperature: 50º
Weather: cool and clear
Pavement: Uneven

A weekend at the rents, my brother and his family are in town from Minnesota. It's a big, small child weekend in Lakewood (missing the fifteen year-old in London whose birthday is today!) Took that lap around the west side of town ... West Side of Cleveland, that is, the run is the length of Lakewood and back, usually I go down Lake and Clifton, this time it was the other way 'round.

My right arm aches, I can only imagine it is from poor weight training. Every now and then I use it, but these day I mostly don't. In my imagination I do sit-ups, but in the real world, I don't. Josh told me about a study that indicated that thinking about exercise can actually be as effective as doing it. Well. Works for him (Ooh! That stings! Good night, Cleveland!)

Tomorrow, by the way, I will be performing on the stage of Severance Hall, playing Dvorak as we explain the origins of the New World Symphony. Come and check it out, it's fun.

Anyway, my arm hurts. I hope tonight's physical activity helps. Now back to eating like hell.

Top 10 Chunkiest Hits from The Decade Just Past

(2001) Weapon of Choice - Fatboy Slim
(2003) Toxic - Britney Spears
(2002) Work It - Missy Elliott
(2004) Chase Me - Hexastatic
(2008) Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) - Beyonce
(2000) Music - Madonna
(2009) The Fear - Lily Allen
(2005) Touch the Sky - Kanye West
(2007) Big Girl (You Are Beautiful) - MIKA
(2006) SexyBack - Justin Timberlake

Facebook Chat:
OATMAN: Any word?
PENGO: I got it.
OATMAN: Cool.
PENGO: It is cool.
OATMAN: I'm working on a new play.
PENGO: What's this one about?
OATMAN: A three hundred pound black guy who runs a marathon.

(And then I laughed so hard I got a hernia.)

Distance: 5.15 miles
Temperature: 52º
Weather: rainy
Weight: 157.5 lbs.

Top 10 Dance Tracks from "The Last Ten Years" (Part 2)

(2001) Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Daft Punk
(2009) This Must Be The Place - Miles Fisher
(2003) Brand New Colony - The Postal Service
(2007) The Girls - Calvin Harris
(2000) Idioteque - Radiohead
(2005) Badass - The Crystal Method

I realized earlier this week that the media just gave up - this decade will have no name. And that's only proper, it was a kidney stone of a decade. But no one even attempted to come up with a name that would stick. There was chatter about it at the beginning of "The Decade" - will it be "The Ohs" or "The Naughts" or "The Nil Set" or what have you. But once that died down, nothing had been decided.

It's like that point in history when everyone was talking about the names of generations. And those who controlled the media at that time - Baby Boomers - came up with names for generations going back centuries. They weren't happy with naming cohorts of a certain genre or way of life - the Lost Generation, the Beat Generation - they were dead set on proscribing when these generations began and ended, and everyone fell into the same category (everyone white and middle-class, anyway) and called their parents the Greatest Generation, themselves re-branded as Boomers and lowly old us as Generation X.

And then, apparently ran out of ideas. (Gen Y? Gen Z? As the kids say, for real?) Or interest. Because it doesn't really hold up well.

So we have no name for this decade. As Top Ten Lists are created, they are sheepishly referred to as "The Top Ten Songs Of The Past Decade" or "Of The Last Ten Years" ignoring the fact that this is going to make it very difficult for lite contemporary stations to sell their playlists. Know how pop stations play the hits from "The 80s, the 90s ... and Today!" Next year they will be playing "The Hits from Today ... and yesterday!"

I heard some guys on the radio bickering about whether next year will be called "Two Thousand Ten" or "Twenty-Ten." Well, duh. People are going to call it both, and no one is going to be punched in the face for it.

I think my favorite turn of phrase was when someone referred to their upcoming season as the "Oh-Nine, Oh-Ten Season."

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 50º
Weather: cool & leafy
Weight: 159 lbs.

Top 10 Disco Songs from What Ever You Call This Decade (Part 1)

(2009) Bulletproof - La Roux
(2002) Breathe - Télépopmusik
(2004) No Expectations - I Am the World Trade Center
(2008) Paris Is Burning - Ladyhawke
(2006) Tracking Treasure Down - Gabriel & Dresden

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 53º
Weather: cool & dark
Weight: 161 lbs.

At the conclusion of three decades I have held - or attempted to hold - a commemorative theme party. Ten years ago we had what may very well be the last (adult) theme party we ever have, the 20th Century Revival Party.

Ten years before that was the 80s Revival Party, and I even tried to get our Christian Youth Group to turn the 1980 Halloween party into a 70s revival party, but none of the other 12 year-olds were into it.

But ... I mean, seriously, an 00s Revival Party? That's bleak, man.

Sisyphus

Podrunner: 152 BPM - Sonorous

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 55º
Weather: cool & dark & perfect
Weight: 162 lbs.

Emerge

Okay. So. At right you will see today's intake. High in fat, to be sure, carb heavy. But the portions have been controlled, and posting it there, at the top of the page, I have shamed myself into avoiding dropping down to the cornershop for M&Ms, Coke or Doritos. That's what I ate, and all I ate.

It's also made me keep a glass of water on my desk at all times (which I did not record.) I do not drink enough water. Right now I am enjoying Harris' Replenishing Elixir ... with a dose of pineapple juice and Grenadine to give it some flavor.

Great run. Shaking off the lethargy. My knees ache a little, though. It's getting cooler out.

Podrunner: 162 BPM - A Running Thread

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 51º
Weather: cool & dark & perfect
Weight: 159.5 lbs.

See? Mac and cheese for dinner and I still lost half a pound a weigh in. I must be doing something right.

Shattered

Sunset across the Heights. A magnificent evening run. Listening to a favorite old running mix, it was as though old smells came back to me ... training for the marathon got me in touch with the urban outdoors like nothing ever has. It was musky, with leaves and earth and pavement and exhaust, and the air was clear and cool.

Listening to: Drive: N*ke+ Original Run - The Crystal Method

Apparently I have not run to this since July 07. It's like an old friend.

Distance: 3.25 miles
Temperature: 58º
Weather: gorgeous
Scale says I'm 152 lbs., which is nice and all, but it's wrong.