One day that’ll be your forehead I’m kissing.

"This hasn't happened to me since M!"

Wednesday night I was on my own, the wife at a dinner, the elder at their internship. It has been a while since I have been on my own with nothing to do myself. And since the kids have graduated high school, I have tried to take advantage of opportunities like these to do things I always told myself I wanted to -- like to watch movies on my own.

I have also been affected by the use of screens, the inability to focus on one story from beginning to end. It's easier at the cinema. On Monday I treated myself to The Testament of Ann Lee. I went out, had a beer, got popcorn, and watched a flick, all by my lonesome.

Wednesday night, I took time to make a list of possible selections. I chose M, Fritz Lang's 1931 psychological thriller which introduced the world to Peter Lorre.

Goodness. Isn't that film timely.

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 28:11
Pace: 9:05

Ten years ago yesterday, my life changed forever. Maybe it is too facile to think that only the death of someone close to me defines my existence, but upon reflection it certainly seems that way. When Calvin was born in 2001, I became a different person, suddenly, and then gradually. I thought differently, looked at the world and the people in it differently.

When my father died of a massive heart attack on the morning of February 19, 2016, my world shifted again, and I moved into this new phase of my life with uncertainty, but also a new purpose. 

With the deaths of Bowie and Prince at around the same time, it became a meme that year, "Everyone is dying! Put a ring around Betty White!" Yeah, well. As George St. Geegland put it, "When a famous person dies, blame the year and make it about you." My father died in 2016, it wasn't part of a curse, it was thing that happened. It was going to happen, fathers die.

As will I, some day. Most mornings these days I say farewell to our elder child as they head off to the openings shift at a local bakery and coffee shop. I am their father. As he was to me, I am to them. I hope I live so long. Longer, though. When did my father stop running? Why did he stop running? I feel like it was something he did for a short while, starting later than I did, and stopping before this. I do not recall.

The exercise keeps me healthy, and fit. Will it extend my existence?

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 52°
Climate: sunny & damp
Mood: sad

I am so sick of some people.

2021 Playlist

Be Sweet - Japanese Breakfast

Security - Amyl & The Sniffers

The Overload - Yard Act

Now I'm In It - Haim

Wet Dream - Wet Leg

Freedom - Jon Batiste

Russian Doll - Gully Boys

The Gathering - Frank Turner

Spit of You - Sam Fender

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 162 lbs. (+2.0)

We watched the USA Gold match yesterday. I had fried pickles, mozzarella moons and onion rings. Then I didn't eat anything for the rest of the day.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: yes

Must keep up with the upper body exercises.

It'd be safest if you ran.

In 2007, the Death Clock said I will die Monday, October 7, 2047.

Now it says I will die Wednesday, May 7, 2042.

What the fuck, Death Clock?

I don't want to die on a Wednesday.

Seriously, though, and to paraphrase Logan 5, "Do I get my five years back?"

Distance: 3.1 miles

Duration: 28:09
Pace: 9:04

Now avoiding all the pre-Halloween Halloween candy in the office. And yet, at home I have started just putting things into my mouth. When it's the other half of the banana I had as part of breakfast, okay, I guess. When you are putting away the leftovers and decide, at the end of the night, to have another "little" bowl of pasta and sauce, that is not okay, that is weirdly compulsive.

Route: Forest Hill Loop
Temperature: 50°
Climate: overcast & cool
Mood: all right

He's got legs.
He knows how to use them.

Capsule review: FRANKENSTEIN (2025)
Given the essential subject matter and also popular trends in gothic horror this film featured a surprising lack of dong.

Stretches: yes
Water: yes
Weight: 161 lbs. (-9.0)

It's cool and damp, but the sun is shining so brightly. An indoor run would be a crime.

Planks: yes
Push-ups: yes

Sit-Ups: yes

Spooky Workout Mix

Rasputin (Club Mix) - Boney M. ft. G. Mart

Mother - Danzig

Sick, Sick, Sick - Queens of the Stone Age

Blood in the Cut - K.Flay

Into The Void - Nine Inch Nails

Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? - Revolting Cocks

Tooth - Lady Gaga

Shit, got some new ideas for the Monster Bash Mix.

You run on fumes.

Yeah, this made me laugh.

The kids took us to see Moana yesterday, and by that I mean they had both seen it already, with their aunt, at Thanksgiving time, and insisted on our seeing it with them. The girl takes particular interest in strong female protagonists, they are both in love with the songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

At Christmas I am disappointed if we do not see at least two movies in the theater. But I also need time to complete the script I am working on, the story is all there but still needs a beginning and an end.  The wife's cousin's fiancée observed it's like McCartney's bridge in A Day In The Life, wanting for someplace to come from and somewhere to go to.

Distance: 4 miles
Avg. Pace: 7:45
Duration: 31:14
Route: Hocking River Bike Path
Temperature: 45°
Climate: bright & cool
Mood: all right

A tad bit overdressed, winter hat, gloves. Glad I was wearing shorts though, the sun was bright enough to make me sweat. I was the weariest I have been this week, running swiftly against the breeze, running fast.

Obama Years (2009-2016)
Burn It Down - Sims
Drive By - Train
Bad Blood * - Ryan Adams
Feel So Close - Calvin Harris
Derezzed - Daft Punk
Something Good Can Work - Two Door Cinema Club
Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny) - A.M. Rahman ft. Pussycat Dolls
I Gotta Feeling (FMIF Remix) - Black Eyed Peas ft. Dave Guetta
Harlem - New Politics
Na Na Nothing - Mike Doughty
New In Town - Little Boots

Lexington run.

This has become an annual thing, stopping into Lexington to visit old friends from the Heights, eat pizza drink beer, enjoy a cool summer's evening and hit a cineplex to watch a truly horrible superhero movie. Last year it was Fantastic Four. Last night it was Suicide Squad. Next year it will be the reboot of Howard the Duck.

Distance: 3.3 miles
Avg Pace: 10:18
Duration: 34:01
Route: Lexington Loop

Beth took me for a beautiful run through the town, along narrow, winding streets, a short trail run, across Park Meadow and some historic old buildings, including the Hancock-Clarke House. Sytze and Toni took a one mile run on the bike path I ran last year when I was here.

Temperature: 81°
Climate: warm & sunny
Mood: good

Center Mayfield Theatre

Another day off was welcome. These mornings I am hobbling a bit. Thursday night in particular was difficult, my right Achilles tendon was singing with pain.

Received a message from the city yesterday that "the restoration of the remaining walks will follow very shortly after the rest of the new natural gas mainline has been installed." Glad to hear it. The word shortly reassuring defines the word after in that sentence, otherwise I would still question whether they work would be done before the snows which will inevitably begin falling in October.

Distance: 6 miles
Duration: 46:52
Avg Pace: 7:48
Route: Cain Park Loop.

Podrunner: Run Track Mind (166 BPM)

We cool. Still humid but I can run in daylight without totally overheating. Brisk run through my side of town. Beautiful, perfect day for the annual neighborhood block party.

Temperature: 64°
Climate: bright and sunny
Weight: 159 lbs.
Intake: banana
Hydration: yes
Water Stop: yes
Stretches: a little

Word is the former Center Mayfield Movie Theatre is due for demolition. I mean, it's been due for demolition for some time now. The last show I saw there was Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In an effort to remain profitable they had split the single screen into two theaters, side by side, but had not moved the seats so whichever theater you were in your seat was oriented towards to edge of the screen.

I sat sideways watching what was possibly the worst movie I have ever seen with a terrible pain in my abdomen which had that day been diagnosed as a hernia. This was almost twenty-one years ago, a little over a year after I had bought my house and right around when my (soon-to-be) ex-wife left. So, maybe it wasn't entirely Branagh's fault.

But the movie theater closed shortly thereafter. So it hasn't been the "Center Mayfield Theater" for twenty years, though the marquee remained as it transitioned into a Hollywood Video. You know what happened next, we stopped renting videos and so it became a state store ... run by someone who couldn't be bothered to change the decor. It looked like a Hollywood Video where you could buy liquor. It's just been vacant for some time now.

I am very familiar with this sidewalk.

I run past this place and around the corner often. Like, very often, it's part of my regular route. I ran past there this morning. I have seen barber shops and stylists and Chinese restaurants come and go. They are all gone now and I recently noticed that every single storefront is now vacant. All that is left is the child care center behind the theater, which must relocate.

I have no nostalgia for the movie theater, that was not part of my time. Frankenstein may have been the only thing I ever saw there. But I only hope the city can find a developer who can create something useful with it. I can't imagine there is demand for another dollar store in this town.

I don't even want to die just yet.

Actually did stretches this morning. I am not limber.

Pre-dawn run, still hot outside. Here we are, in summer.

Science has determined that the year I graduated from high school - 1986 - was the most homogenous year in the history of recorded music (or at least, from 1960-2010.) However, that does not explain how the song Weird Science can compel me to sprint for an additional half-mile, mostly uphill.

And no, I will not let the boy ever watch that movie. I would show him porn before I let him watch Weird Science.

Temperature: 71°
Distance: 3.85 miles
Avg Pace: 8.19
Climate: muggy

Weight: 158.5 lbs.
From Goal: -1.5

Sunday Alcohol Units: -0-

What's on Daddy's iPone?
Invisible Sun - The Police

Oh my God. Pete Campbell is going to die in a plane crash.

You can run, you can run.

 
What I Have Been Doing Instead of Running:

• Staying warm
• Time with family
• Work
• Reading
• Writing

These last two are key. I made a “New Year’s Resolution” for 2014, which is not something I traditionally do. There’s so much humor to be found (ha ha ha) in not keeping your resolutions, I thought as a young person they were pointless. Resolve to do what you mean to do when you decide it is necessary, arbitrary dates be arbitrary.

However, the new year coincided with a new desire, a deeply felt desire, in conjunction with an already recently established commitment, to wit;

1. Read just before putting out the light.
2. Write upon waking.

I have been writing, in long-hand, most mornings since October. The habit of writing, the very necessary habit of writing -- one which I possessed in the past, but lost -- has been hindered by the internet. Before the internet, I just wrote. Before I had a laptop with wifi, I just wrote. Access to the internet, virtually everywhere, has provided endless distraction.

The new rule is that my laptop is not permitted in the bedroom. I write on an honest-to-goodness stenographer’s pad, with a pen, every morning. Even when there is nothing to write, I write. And lo, there is something to write, and I am writing it. I have no idea if it is good, and that is a good thing. I am always so confident when I am writing, and often without cause. It is good to be unsure.

Reading, however, is the other important component. The internet has been a distraction from reading, and I should be a voracious reader. I can be, I was as a child, and in fits and starts as an adult. Reading before bed, it’s simple, and much more effective at lulling me to sleep than drinking.

The other day I completed The Tender Bar, and then I began Bring Up The Bodies. Memoir. Historical fiction. My wife and I had an interesting discussion after seeing Inside Llewyn Davis. She is not a fan of non-fiction, as it instills an artificial sense of order, or fate even, upon an unfair world. We only read about success, rarely if ever failure, and where this failure, there is always a reason.

One of my father’s favorite books is The Last Place on Earth, an excellent document of man’s race to the South Pole. Fate! Hubris! Success and failure, neatly explained. One of my favorites is Into Thin Air. My father and I like books about cold places and death, apparently. I digress.

Inside Llewyn Davis, which we both enjoyed (curse you, Academy) chronicles a story not told. We have seen Walk The Line and Ray and all those movies which describe the inevitably of success. These men were geniuses, in spite of their faults. Of COURSE they would become icons.

But, whatever. I like non-fiction. Perhaps they merely reinforce the Great Man theory of history. I see the thin ice upon which all decisions rest, and how all the preparation in the world cannot protect you from complete disaster.

Temperature: 23°
Pavement: thin layer of slippery snow
Distance: 3.25 miles
Weight: 176.5 lbs.

Seriously. You can't run west on Monticello without face gear when the weather is freezing. Why can I not remember this? I thought my face was going to harden and crack.

1968 Playlist
Magic Bus - The Who
Folsom Prison Blues (Live at Folsom Prison) - Johnny Cash
Sympathy For The Devil - The Rolling Stones
Grazing In The Grass - Hugh Masekela
Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey - The Beatles
Street Fighting Man - The Rolling Stones
Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While) - The Isley Brother
Crossroads - Cream
Hurdy Gurdy Man - Donovan

The boy has been enrolled at School Of Rock. His instructor wants him to get acquainted with four, seminal rock bands with awesome drummers -- The Who, Jim Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. He's also supposed to bring in a song of his choice to practice, and he chose Tempted by Squeeze because this is my son.