You can run down the waveband.

Still with the kink in my ankle. Only when I wake up. Doesn't trouble me when I run. Not yet, anyway. Today we tech for the show. It is fascinating to enter a production in this way, jumping in at the last minute.

At the same time, my new script About a Ghoul is in rehearsal at Talespinner and I have been receiving notes from rehearsals with suggestions here and there for changing lines -- even the name of one character for whom I had received a poor translation.

I had read that the word "Samira" is Arabic for friend or companion, when (in Morocco, at least) it means "one who stays up late like an owl." While I love knowing that, it is an inappropriate name for the character!

And rehearsals for The Way I Danced With You begin Monday night at Ensemble. What a busy, busy month!

Distance: 2 miles
Route: Rec Center
Mood: good
Exercises: no

The 'Strange Science' Behind The Big Business Of Exercise Recovery, Fresh Air (2/11/2019)

Today Fresh Air told me that marathon runners refer to Ibuprofen as "Vitamin I." Thanks, Terry!

Seriously, though. On yesterday's episode, author Christie Aschwanden (Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery) teaches us that everything we know about recovery is wrong.

For example:

1. Ibuprofen is actually harmful as a prophylactic pain reliever or for regular use as an inflammatory.
2. Proactive drinking is bad for you.
3. Relief from a foam roller is psychosomatic.

Well, we knew that last one was true. Anyway, a worthwhile listen.

Baseline: 179.5 lbs.
Today: 179.5 lbs. (-1.0)
Goal: 175 lbs.

Two miles, straight through, no stopping, no machines. Big day. Gotta move.

1977 Playlist
Every 1's a Winner - Hot Chocolate
Mr. Blue Sky - ELO
Blame It On Cain (demo) - Elvis Costello
We're A Happy Family - The Ramones
The Things We Do For Love - 10cc

Cooldown:
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll - Ian Dury & The Blockheads

Visit my Team Challenge Crohn's & Colitis page and support my bid for the Chicago Marathon!

Made of clay.

Snikt!

Searching for an old VHS cassette, I came across a collection of acting work from school, circa 1988-89. These were scenes which were intentionally videotaped by our professor, some in theater spaces, or even worse, in a room with the camera a few feet away. Performing Shakespeare for the camera.

Good Lord. To think I almost received a degree in acting, it's terrible. It's all terrible, especially the close-up stuff. I mean, I know, you can't look back at your twenty year-old self and have any respect for him, especially when he has chosen a piece from Hamlet when he hasn't actually read the play.

That's the thing, really. Acting when you haven't internalized anything, when there is nothing inside, it's all spewing and emoting. Last week I was adjudicating a Shakespeare recitation competition at a local school, it's like a big coincidence I found that tape this week, so that I could earnestly compare and contrast my own work with that of high school sophomores and juniors.

I think I would have come in fourth or fifth. Out of eight.

Temperature: 70°
Climate: cool, wet, clammy
Distance: 3.25 miles
Weight: 176 lbs.

Oh my, it's all gone damp. Outside.

Charging seems to be the order of the day, I charge. Maybe it's the guitar-heavy soundtrack, but I also think it's that sense of urgency, the need to get onto that next thing.

The last time I felt this way I scored two speeding tickets in the as many weeks. That was March.

Ringfinger Playlist
Valerie Loves Me - Material Issue
I Do Not Want This - Nine Inch Nails
Very Ape  - Nirvana
They Say - Scars on Broadway
Under - Filter
Nearly Lost You - Screaming Trees
Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle - Nirvana

Traffic jam of the brain.

Emotional trauma can re-emerge in many ways. Reliving memories of terrible events can trigger deeply felt and forgotten horrors which can confuse you, make you doubt your own ability to perceive reality, leave you entirely adrift.

What if you told a story so many times, to yourself and to others, that every second has become etched into your mind, indelible, that this version of what happened becomes the record? And then, what if you hear this story again, told from someone else's point of view, it all happens in the same way, but all the specifics are different?

And then you remember it never actually happened to you at all. What she is reporting is the truth, because it happened to her and not to you. You just made yourself believe that it was you. Because that is your job. Because you are an actor.

I am not talking about me. I am talking about you.

Following Biff's big self-revelation in Act II of Death of a Salesman (I WAS A SHIPPING CLERK!) often I ask students whether it is possible to tell a lie so often, that the lie becomes truth and you believe that it actually happen. You fool yourself. Most of the time they don't know what it is I am talking about.

Temperature: 32°
Climate: crisp & dry
Distance: 3.25 miles

That awkward moment, thirty seconds after you have whipped off your running gloves, that you realize you are no longer wearing your wedding ring.

1985 Playlist
? (Modern Industry) - Fishbone
Let's Go All The Way - Sly Fox
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side - The Smiths
She's On It - Beastie Boys
Faron - Prefab Sprout
Sleeping Bag - ZZ Top
Subculture - New Order
Sussudio - Phil Collins