bmichael

[bmichael]

I remember when I was going to listen to every Miles Davis album and write about it on here.

Maybe I'll get started on that. Are people using this thing?

[bmichael]

I’m on mastodon now, like everyone (?) else

[bmichael]

Seasons (Still Changing—Now more than Ever!)

I wrote this rambly, good for nobody other than me diary-type post the other day. And wouldn’t you know it, I forgot to include the main thing I had found most interesting, something resembling a public-facing question.

So, ofc. we had lived in New York (Astoria, then Kensington) for about ten years (me slightly less, J slightly more). Over that time, I feel like we changed, like, 0%. I mean, of course things were developing. Opportunities coming and going, mostly going for me. But our day to day, even when I had a relatively real job, were pretty fluid, yet static.

I think a lot about that Iron & Wine album title, Our Endless Numbered Days. Honestly, I’ve never given the album itself much of a listen, but it was ubiquitous in the mid-00s and it has a great title.

Endless numbered days = my first season in New York, and it lasted for about 7 years. 

Then we had a child. Then, it was like, “Goodbye, Iron & Wine! Hello, Smash Mouth!” 

When you have a 0-year-old, “the years start coming and they don't stop coming.” Sleeping routines are the most important thing in your world, other than basic health and safety and carving out a modicum of time and space in a one-bedroom apartment. Then it’s daycare. Then it’s school. Then it’s, god knows, I don’t know yet. 

I grew up more in the last four years than I did in the preceding 30, and that feels weird to me. Like I’m a stunted, damaged person. Or maybe lots of people feel like that? Hard to say. Shout out in the comments, whether you’ve grown up at all or you feel like an adult child most of the time.

[bmichael]

Seasons Change

My boss talks frequently about seasons, but I think more like sports seasons rather than time/weather seasons. He will talk about seasons in re: things like projects at work, ebbs and flow, people joining and leaving the company. I used to find it a little trite and business-speak-y empty headed nonsense stuff, even though, if I thought about it with a bit more empathy it’s just another way to talk about the macro business view of things that really is his job to talk about.

And then I was out for a run, and the “seasons” thing really hit me. Like hard.

I read this  great post on the Cruel Summer Book Club thing. It’s about losing her grandma’s ring (Is there anything more hopeless and small-feeling-making thing than losing a cherished object in public?) but there was one passage that stuck with me:

At night Grandma would let me rub her feet with her fancy lotions, then I’d crawl into bed in the middle of Grandma and Grandpa and throw my right leg over Grandma’s body. Grandma was my first body pillow, a kind of comfort I can still feel in my bones. Nowadays I only get to lie this way with lovers—no physical position could make me feel more held.

See, J left a few months ago to do a thing, and I was alone with my daughter  (~5) for a couple weeks.

Anyone with kids probably is like, SLEEP, yes, big topic, very important. And anyone without them, no offense, inhabits an entirely different world from which it’s likely impossible to understand this parent-child-SLEEP world. (Living in the “regular” world is infinitely better, so this isn’t a holier-than-thou thing.)

Before J left, my daughter would come into our bed and want to sleep or cuddle, and we would send her back into her own room because it’s like impossible to sleep with a twisting turning knobby joint five-year-old, and sleep is pretty important for everyone, right. And this mostly worked every night.

Once J left, my daughter was quite sensitive to the change, even though it was temporary, and I didn’t have the heart to make her go back to bed (all the time, at least) so we started doing “cuddle time,” which is just that. While we were sleeping, or not sleeping, or that truly liminal asleep-not-sleeping thing, we would just cuddle. Even if it was for a few minutes before it was really, really, really time to get up or else we would both be late. As long as I placed some value on it and didn’t try to rush things or skip it, it was meaningful and warm and nice.

A few days ago, I read that passage above from Jillian Anthony’s thing, and thought to myself, yeah you know I never really thought about how it must feel from my daughter’s perspective. You’ve got this giant person who can envelope you, who is your sole source of food and comfort for the most part, and you spend an intimate time with them. It’s really something.

See, I used to get up at 430 or 5 a.m. to go running or do work, but the last 6 months or so, especially now that Cuddle Time has been instituted, that whole thing is out the window. I’ve barely run at all in 2022 really. (At its peak, I ran maybe 40 miles a week, which is decent for a not-serious runner!!) I love running, and I don’t get to do it that much anymore, mostly for reasons having to do with my daughter. And Cuddle Time is currently enemy number one when it comes to early morning runs now that it gets light early.

So, I was running and thinking about running (I do that a lo when I’m running, it’s very meta) and how I was sad I don’t get to run as often as I would like. It was about 50 degrees, the air was still damp along the wooded trail I like to run on now that we live where we live (next to a wooded trail). And I was thinking how perfect this felt, but it’s something that’s been taken from me. How does that feel? It doesn’t feel good. But I’ve (sadly, only lately when this insight was available to me at literally any other point in the last 20 years) come to realize that everything is temporary. And this running, or not running, is also temporary. 

It’s one of life’s seasons.

Side note: I’ve never really understand this No Exit / Velvet Underground I’ll-be-your-mirror concept. People are mirrors only insofar as they’re cracked mirrors (as it were, to borrow another literary thing), which really is no mirror at all. Maybe that’s the point? That people aren’t mirrors? Anyway, there is something deep and plangent about how a young child isn’t a mirror so much as a perfectly expressive canvas for thoughts and emotions. The pure rage of denial, or longing for protection and soothing. It’s all right there! Kids would be terrible poker players. 

So, I was running and thinking about running, and thinking these thoughts about seasons and was trying to think of whether this was a good season or a bad one, and came pretty quickly to the idea that, far from the basement, we’re on top of the standings this season. Losing some fitness and squeezing in runs when I’m already tired is worth it for Cuddle Time and warmth and protection. I think it’s important to keep these things in mind.

[bmichael]

Is this thing on

[bmichael]

Pain and Gain

2020-10-14

1 mile, 10:45 pace

::Sets down beige folding chair, turns hat backward, sits down chairback against chest, like a teacher about to get real with you::

Pain is a funny thing.

Mine is the most important thing in the world. Yours might cause mine to increase. Or mine causes yours. In my personal experience, this seems to be the case, at least.

How do people share pain? When they experience the same hurt, right?

Perhaps that’s why I love reading and watching books and movies that depict striving and athletic-type achievement. From your classics like Once a Runner to only tangentially related sports media like Uncut Gems. When you feel the same hurt of the athlete (or athlete-proxy gambler, say), you share the experience of pain. Which can be cathartic. Or at least it externalizes a deeply hidden part of yourself that, perhaps in my case who’s to say, you almost never feel or access unless it boils over like an overfilled pot of noodles, spilling scalding water all over your nerves.

It’s such a broad cliche to say that pain makes you feel alive, but it really does, doesn’t it?

Physical pain, I felt some of the worst recently when I got stung on the foot. Wearing sandals at the playground, I saw many bees or wasps buzzing around but this one came out of nowhere as I walked from the swings to the slides. The next thing I knew, my foot was a ball of pain. The pain didn’t go away for two days. During that first day, it was such an intense and constant companion that I didn’t think about cutting my foot off, but I thought about how if it went on for very long I would definitely start thinking about it.

The other big physical pain I had recently was from a skateboarding accident (lol) trying to get back into things, during the peak of the onset of quarantine on a chilly May night. Luckily I put on a bright orange fleece, literally the only smart thing I did. I was just zipping along, getting a feel for a new Pennyboard I’d just got, when I hit something. Like a patched piece of asphalt or something, and you can tell I’m getting quite old, the next thing I know I’m on the ground. I can’t move my legs. I’m paralyzed.

What had happened was, I had many years ago hurt my neck doing something really stupid (this is a life theme of mine) and now this evening I landed back-of-neck-first somehow right on the spot I had apparently injured. I bruised my spinal cord and shifted some discs. Then, an all-night stay in the ER (during the peak of the onset of quarantine, mind you) getting first an MRI then a CAT scan wearing a neck brace, unable to sleep. After a few hours, I wasn’t really scared anymore. I had a good idea I wasn’t going to be paralyzed, at least. But it was emotionally a lot.

Cut to, the next day. We used to do mid-week family trips to the grocery store. This accident of mine happened on a Tuesday, so the next morning I drove us to Wegmans. My whole upper body ached so much, but it was really hard to tell what was making what hurt. See, a few weeks before THIS, I had not-quite but sort of dislocated my shoulder, or at least really fucked up a shoulder that had been previously dislocated many times but had been pretty well healed up for 7+ years at this point... jumping rope. So that shoulder hurt. My neck hurt. My back hurt. From the waist up, I hurt all over. 

Time passed, and the acute pain basically went away, but I’d get awful nerve-y pain and feelings on runs. I went for a relatively fast run like a couple days after this accident (at the time, I had a plan to run 1,000 miles in 2020 and had already taken a few week-long stretches off). Well, running now presented some new problems.

Because of the previous neck-type injury I mentioned above, I’d sometimes get a juddering not-quite-pain but very unpleasant feeling in my neck if I tilted my head up the wrong way while running, say. Now, I got a similar pain if I turned my head to the left. And often, I’d get a heart-throbbing pain-type feeling, like a psychedelic nervey type of pain in the middle of my chest (the MRI only went down to the nape of my neck, and I think I may have fucked up myself a bit further down, too, but who knows), radiating outward. 

It felt like rainbow knives running against the grain of the inside of my back and chest muscles.

Well, this really sucked. I’m happy to say that by like the end of summer all of this pretty much went away, knock on wood. Either the nerve endings died or my discs started returning where they belong, or I’m one wrong step away from dying or being paralyzed. Who knows! My way is to not question it until it’s way too late.

Fun side note: After I fell down and couldn’t move really, I was of course in the road. Not the very middle, but like way more in the road than you’d want to be at like 9pm on a dark night. The first car I saw crested the hill I had been going down, and I start waving my arms and screaming bloody murder. Luckily, they see me and kind of pull over. I ask the woman who rolls down her window to call 911, which she does. And then I ask her to come out and stand next to me so I don’t get run over, which she does not. She says she has an autistic child in the car and they’re having a hard time. Someone else also stops at this point, and he also won’t stand like next to next to me, but he kind does. Perhaps it was the covid or just the utter bizarreness of the scene. A grown man, lying in the road, unable to move, in the middle of the night during a very strange time in everyone’s life.

I haven’t really reflected on this too much, other than to occasionally get mad at myself or at “life” or whatever. I do try to stay grateful for my ability to do things right now that certainly seemed up in the air just a few months ago.

[bmichael]

So Long Gone

13.1 miles at 10:28 per mile.

2020-10-12

Yesterday was Columbindigenous Peoples’ Day. It was also the first day off I’ve had in honestly I can’t remember when. Well, actually, I kind of can. I was very sick, and Luna and my partner were in New York, and I lay on the couch all day. I watched Good Time on Netflix and dozed. The movie was great, the day sucked.

I spent yesterday similarly, but it was great!

Parenting, at least the way I do, I never get a day off. When Luna’s off from pre-k, I spend the day with her. On the weekends, when I don’t have work, I spend the day with her. On the weekends when I do have work, I spend the day with her. It’s a lot, but I love it. But of course I hate it, too. How can you not hate never having any time to yourself?

After I dropped Luna off to pre-k I went home and had some leftover sausage and bread. Then I lay on the couch for about 3 hours playing Hades on my Switch and listening to podcasts. 

On Sunday I thought I was coming down with something. I went for a quick run (3 miles at 10:35 per mile) and felt better. At some point between that moment and sleep, I decided I’d go for a long run the next day, and I’d do it somewhere nice.

See, we’ve lived in Syracuse (formerly of Flatbush Brooklyn) for almost two years, and have gone on plenty of weekend adventures to lakes, forests, and trails, but always as a family. Or, more often, Luna and me. Never just myself. I knew there were some good trails along the Erie Canal, so I figured I’d go out there. I’d gone there with Luna a few times, but I couldn’t remember the precise trailhead we used. I googled around Monday morning and found on in Camillus, which was only like 15 minutes away. 

It’s incredible how far a 15 minute drive can transport you.

Around noon, after digesting and gathering energy for a few hours, I drove out to the trailhead. It was a glorious day marked with an inauspicious start. I forgot my gum, my water, and a mask, so I found myself pulling my tech shirt up over my nose with one hand while I rooted around in a Byrne Dairy to get water and gum. I got a big Smartwater of high-PH alkaline water because the label was black and I thought it looked cool. It tasted like... water.

The trail near the trailhead was beautiful. It ran along the canal for two miles. Then, the way most of these trails work out here, they’ll cross a country road and then go on further, isolated from the roads or at least well separated. The next phase was hilly and seemed to be popular with dog walkers. It looked kind of scrubby and industrial. The stretch after that looked even more industrial, with some big Honeywell site fenced off. Finally, after crossing another road, I was in this weird Wizard of Oz type countryside with giant, feral-looking stalks of corn growing beyond a fairly fresh made wooden fence spanning the length of the trail for as far as I could see. On my left was a quiet country road and the random industrial-looking plant or whatever. Giant power line poles with DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE signs. 

Over the course of this first out, my knee started acting up. Around mile 3 I was worried I wouldn’t be able to go as far as I kind of thought I wanted to go. I hadn’t set an official goal or intent, but I knew I wanted to run at least a half marathon, maybe even 16 miles to go longer than I ever had before. Since I was on day 62 of a run streak, I thought it may be a bit foolish to push myself so far, but this countryside.

After running out a bit over 5 miles, I figured I’d turn around and see how I felt after 10 miles. I knew if I felt half alive, I’d make it to 13.1, and I was right. Around mile 8 the struggle was real. I felt like my arms were windmilling, but they were probably barely pumping. My cadence felt impossibly fast and the sound of my feet on the gravel trail sounded like an elephant charge. But my watch said I was barely going 11:00/mile.

I had started out listening to my running playlist, hitting some emotional highs. After maybe an hour I switched over to my audiobook of Malazan, though, and just powered through like miles 5 through 9. After I felt like I was really starting to lose it—despite having plenty of energy in my heart my legs were dying—I turned back to music.

I finally made it back to my car around mile 10, and went for a water break. (Yes, I ran for like an hour and forty-five minutes with nothing but gum. When I began running, I’d get so mad at people who suggested you didn’t need to constantly scarf down water while you were running because running was THIRSTY WORK. But after a few years (?) I don’t really need to drink water when I’m running. I mean, it HELPS, but it’s not necessary.) But in this case, yes, the water was glorious. I also found a few pretzels and chocolate left over from visiting a pumpkin farm Saturday, and god those were amazing.

The first part of the final 3.1 miles kind of sucked. I crossed the road the other way to run on a new part of the trail, and I somehow missed the actual trail and ran for about a mile on a shitty access road to a gun range. It was loose-yet-hard and the odd car went by. When I actually got back onto the Erie Canal trail, it was much better. You were right next to the water, the sun on this side of the wherever I was had come out. I really felt the water and snacks I’d crushed, and knowing I was all but sure to finish felt nice.

The last half mile or so back to the parking lot felt glorious. I hit my mark, crossed the road, and basically started laughing out of joy as I threw myself down on a grassy hill next to the trailhead.

Running in the actual countryside gave my better feelings and stronger energy than I can recall having in like, a long time. It was truly restorative. It feels a bit like a gut punch that I could probably run in a place like that everyday or several times a week if I could “carve out” a little more time alone. I guess I’ll work on it.

I was planning on using this post to talk about the injury I had in March and how I never thought I’d be able to run much again. But perhaps I’ll do that in a later one. I was so happy yesterday. It feels foolish to end on a down note, now.

[bmichael]

Mouth Stuff

2020-10-06

3.28 miles, 10:32 pace

First of all, running in fall is the best. It's not soggy like spring, which makes me think of running in wet socks. It's not as ballscold as winter, which makes me think of running in cold, wet socks. And it's obviously not like running in summer, which makes me think of running in sweaty, wet socks. Fall is the ideal time to run (in the Northeast, at least).

Today was day 56. After begging off consecutive 6+ mile days two weekends ago because of some ankle/knee issues, my knee felt super fucky and weird today. It didn't hurt, but it felt numbly inflamed, like a poppable pimple. It's the kind of feeling that leads right up to hurting, or cracking (like cracking a joint) but it wouldn't crack. The wather was impressive, but I thought I had to get back to work and the knee, so I only did about three miles. Perfect weather day, though.

This work thing is so vexing.

We have a new project manager who's trying to keep every plate spinning, and we're not a large firm. Like 15–20 people. But, from my end at least, it feels like it's barely holding together.

Let's see. I had planned on listening to some [Neil Cicierega](http://www.neilcic.com) and really opening up the throttle, but the knee kind of kept me in low-pace cruise mode. This Neil Cicierega guy has apparently been around for a long time, but I only just discovered him. He's like Girl Talk + Weird Al. For a music nerd, it's extremely pleasurable music to listen to. Like mashing up "in the halls of the mountain king" with "say it ain't so" or "everlong" with "don't want to miss a thing." When he played an alanis morissete isolated vocal, and then dropped the full house theme a minute in, I fucking lost it.

So I'm hoping some rest tonight, and a few one-milers (ugh, have done so many of those to keep the streak alive), and hopefully the knee will hold up for 81.

See ya.

[bmichael]

Bad Josh Allen Takes

2020-09-28 2.09 miles, 11:26 pace

Wow, so tired. Put Luna to bed around 730pm and went for a run afterward catching up on NFL podcasts. I put on my headlamp and a neon yellow tanktop. I even wore my Hokas (even though I suspect they're making my legs more tired than my Skechers GoRuns or Adidas Bostons, which are my usual shoes) because they have more reflective parts. I'm deathly (hah, literally) afraid of getting hit when I'm running, and obviously that goes to eleven after dark.

I don't know why, but in this inverted year I've derived an immense amount of pleasure from watching sports. Which, I know, it seems like everyone is. But, and I've been an avid sports follower for a while, I have not been as avid a sports watcher. An avid sports gambler, sports content consumer, sports thinker abouter from a cultural context. But I'll honestly just watch the ESPN gamecast thingy with the circles moving around a basketball court and the laggy play-by-play as soon as watch an actual game. It doesn't help that it's kind of difficult to actually watch NBA most of the time.

So this is all to say that I've been heavily invested in Josh Allen this year. Living in Syracuse now, I get to watch broadcasts of the Bills rather than the Jets or Giants. Which, given this season, would have been a sportsviewing enhancement either way.

After week one, I was miffed that none of the podcasts really talked up Allen, other than perhaps mentioning he fumbled ridiculously but also passed for more than 300 yards. After week two, people were cautiously optimistic, but said well the Rams are next week so we'll see. I actually think the Dolphins are probably good? So I count that as a quality win. So now that the Bills beat the Rams with Allen doing just about everything, people are happy to be aboard the hype train. Which is fine. And I have watched a number of Josh Allen games in the past where he looked like shit. Last year's AFC playoff game against the Texans comes to mind. But this year, watching Allen play is a pure joy.

One thing I hadn't counted on was the wreckingball terror that Aaron Donald is. I mean, obviously, but I haven't exactly watched a ton of Rams games. That one Super Bowl, I guess. I'm not precisely sure what the Bills did during the first like 2.5 quarters, but for the final third of the game Donald almost singlehandedly won the game. People still talked shit about the facemask sack and all the ridiculous-seeming things Allen did in the fourth quarter, but I don't think I heard Donald's name come up hardly at all? He tore through the Bills' line like precision German kitchen shears through tissue paper. It was terrifying.

So yeah, the Bills. The NBA playoffs. Last night's Ravens Chiefs game that I watched after I showered off my run. Sports have been great, and I don't really get it, but I won't exactly question it for now. It feels forboding, like a lump in a formerly smooth area of the body. But we'll see...

[bmichael]

Trying something new. Writing in the app.

Did a slow five miles yesterday. Listened to the excellent You're Wrong About podcast. Learned a lot about the Duke lacrosse rape case and Amy Fisher. Basically, the criminal justice system and the media are both evil-adjacent and incompetent.

Today (Sunday) I've got some knee pain and sore legs. My Garmin said to rest 51 hours (lol) yesterday, but I think it's because I ran so slow. There are a clutch of last gasp 80 degree summer days. I thought running at 2pm would be romantic but it was just sweaty. As so many experiences are.

Then again, on weekends I can only run when Luna's napping from 1-3 so I didn't really have a choice. In fact, that's how I've done all my distance runs this summer. I'd like to think it made me tougher, but it probably just wore me out.

[bmichael]

But first, our friends

2020-09-25   1.01 miles, 10:58 pace

Day 45 of the run streak. Such a cursed number. Just a perfunctory single mile in between meetings. It should almost go without saying that I couldn't really run streak without WFH. So that's possibly a single good thing about all this shit.

I listened to the Bill Simmons podcast today. It's an unusual hate-listen type thing for me. I genuinely enjoy listening to him, even as I roll my eyes at every other thing he says. I'd probably need to see a therapist to really explain my relationship, or why it feels natural to use the word "relationship" to describe it. I think if you scroll down just a couple posts, there's probably something I wrote about him like a year+ ago connecting listening to him with running.

🎶Nothing ever happens in Blaine🎶

Before I set off, I heard him say the stupidest thing I think I've ever heard him say. I was compelled to clip and tweet, which is not even so much about venting anymore and more about narcissism or something  deeply unhealthy. The bad side of bad Simmons fandom.

https://twitter.com/bmichael/status/1309483502753271808?s=20

Well, whatever. It's a beautiful sunny 70+ degree day out. I knocked an easy one out for the streak. I woke up and my legs felt tired (from actually working out on a run yesterday) and that was a glorious feeling. I think this weekend I'll try to log at least 12 miles. We'll see.

[bmichael]

“Oh My Gosh”

2020-09-24 2 miles, 8:10 pace

According to SmashRun, this was my fastest 2-mile run in a year. This was by design. It marks day day 44 of a semi-planned 81-day running streak. My current longest run streak is 80 days (for the around the world thing). 81 beats it, and it's also sort of a Kobe thing I guess. (Kobe scored a career high of 81 points against the Raptors in 2006.)

Obviously there are some complicated feelings about Kobe.

So today I was listening to my "Awesome Songs" playlist, really a catch-all of songs I like, updated in semi-real time, over the last decade or two. (Yikes that's a lot of time.) I swear to god, there are like five Hold Steady songs out of like 500 songs, but one always comes up. One did today. ("Your Little Hood Rat Friend")

I usually listen to audiobooks. One(ish) audiobook in particular: The Malazan Book of the Fallen. Give me two hours and I'll just go run an 11-minute pace listening to Malazan as the miles melt away behind me like ice cream on hot pavement.

But I've recently come to think that I'm kind of wasting my runs. No, I'm not in a very well-trained state. When I was really into running, I did a half in 1:53:58 and a 10K in 47:56. Not worldbeater times by any means, but I was in my lower-mid-30s then; I'm in my upper-mid-30s now. And I essentially took two years off during my daughter's first two years of life. Smashrun makes a nice "Trailing 365 day miles" chart that illustrates the rise and fall and optimistic rise again of my running hobby.

Yeah, so the reason why this was a fast run. I usually go on either quite short runs (my rule is one mile counts for one day in the run streak) or pretty long (for me) eight to 12 miles runs. I had made up an informal rule of trying to run 20 miles per week (to achieve an informal goal of running 666 (down from 1,000) miles this year). But I don’t know if it were a new pair of Hokas or too much volume or quarantine pounds, but my lower legs and knees began hurting. I basically only ran seven miles last weekend, and one mile per day the last two days. Today, I wanted to open things up.

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ -

So I always used to get really great ideas when I was running. And at some point, I kind of stopped getting paid to have ideas? Sort of. And now I'd like to try to capture some ideas again. Thus, the ninety-eight-hundredth ressurection of this Tumblog.

LOL, I remember when I was going to review every Miles Davis album on Columbia.

Let me spare you: One can listen infinitely to The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel and get entirely off for a lifetime. Then again, a lot of times I'm more of a Sketches of Spain type, or if I want to get nothing done I'll put the Cellar Door Sessions on random. That's it. That's all the insight I gleaned from 20 years of listening to Miles.

So yeah I guess this is an attempt to ameliorate that? I don't know. My thoughts are such a storm of constant change these days. Sometimes I feel so centered, but a moment later I realize I was anything but—I've just gotten extremely adroit at glazing over my mental eye and turning off my introspection.

The new Fleet Foxes album got a BNM. Meanwhile, yesterday I realized I hadn't listened to their 2017 album (although I pirated it), Crack-Up. I've actually gotten back onto a Father John Misty kick, which might allow me to back into listening more to Fleet Foxes. (Honeybear is brilliant. Pure Comedy is a complete flop, IMO, which turned me off from him entirely, although I think I understand what he was trying to do, now, I still hate it. God's Favorite Customer is extremely good.)

So of course, since I opened up this Sublime Text instance, I've been listening to Fleet Foxes S/T with the intention of listening to the entire catalog, culminating in the zeitgeisty and newly BNM'd Shore. Of course, I have three hours left, and there's almost no way this will happen. Why do these historical-arc-encompassing but knowling futile gestures appeal to me? It's quite literally reflexive. I'm halfway done with the act before I realize what I did, at which point I know it won't work. This could be said for a lot of things I do.

OK, I've gotten quite far from my very brief 2-mile run this AM.

[bmichael]

The Strokes Live AT $2 Dollar Bill [Full Concert]

Great nostalgia watch. Were The Strokes ever better?

[bmichael]

Cold Takes

You need something extra after you drag yourself out of bed at 450am in a polar vortex to go to the gym long before sunrise. So I was honestly delighted this morning to see a new Chuck Klosterman - Bill Simmons podcast posted.

I’ve had an up-and-down relationship to reading and listening to these two. Growing up, I was a sponge for their ideas, then as a more mature person I outright rejected and ridiculed them, and now as we’re all more or less adults I can relate to their thoughts in a probably more considered way.

Simmons was in the news recently because of this WSJ profile of The Ringer and him that mentioned, among other things, that the Ringer makes around $15MM a year on ad and podcast revenue. Now, I saw some sports blogs and twitter users throw this number around as if it were large. And it’s not zero, but it’s not really a large revenue figure for a media network with you’ve got to figure at least 50 staffers (it launched with 43 and has grown) based in LA. He’s a businessman and a business, man (I will retire that phrase now) but it’s definitely still a pretty small business.

So the podcast. I started listening to it as I went through my usual deadlift-squat-rows day -- not super fun but not the worst (squats-focused is the worst) and found it pretty entertaining. I don’t really care about Tony Romo’s announcing one way or the other and I thought they both circled around some pretty un-nuanced ideas re: basketball offenses. (Is the best offense just having James Harden try to score every play or pass -- maybe?! Three pointers and dunks are really good -- whoa, great point!)

There’s one relevant point to this ramble where they’re talking about the different Fyre Festival docs and what being an influencer means. Neither seems to have a strong grasp on the term. Simmons focuses on it qua job or activity, where you get paid to endorse something while Klosterman sees it more as an Aristotelian category. Neither correctly assesses it as a figure in the culture with great-than-zero brand recognition and a role within the capitalist-media complex to generate added revenue for someone or something and not always yourself. Ie, they’re both influencers, but neither seems to consider this.

(This point sort of comes up later tangentially and unnoticed when Klosterman laments his latest book dealing with all these things currently being made into films and documentaries while he got none of the credit...)

At the 1:15 mark Simmons brings up the movie Green Book and its unfair treatment thus far. Now, in the last podcast with Wesley Morris, Simmons talks about how he likes Green Book and thinks the movie works just fine while simultaneously reading the wikipedia page for the concept of the magic negro (really, he does this). He’s coming from a place of really liking the movie and attributing to it (or to his enjoyment of the movie, maybe more precisely) a nobody-believes-in-us type of moral gumption and gravity.

My reading of Simmons in the last two podcasts is that the movie’s embattled status as controversial and under fire by parts of the media pisses him off slightly and makes him want to see it succeed. In this equation, Green Book is the 2019 Patriots and Simmons treats it accordingly.

So Simmons says to Klosterman (almost a direct quote, but I don’t have time to go back and re-listen. It’s at 1:15:30-ish)

unless you satisfy all these different demographics, a piece of art will be rejected

He doesn’t clarify what “different demographics” he means, but I’m taking him to mean black people, primarily. He perhaps also means young people and/or woke twitter warriors. Simmons continues, saying that he thinks art “should make you think”.

By itself, I found this point uproariously out of touch and wrong, but Simmons kind of continues to sort of tease this point out with Klosterman. I’m saying “continues to sort of tease” not because I write in a folksy, casual style but because he really doesn’t seem to have an argument or single point of view in mind, and this is what I found so fascinating by this part of the podcast.

(Klosterman, for his part, doesn’t really say much about Simmons’ comments except that he grew up in a different era and understands he has a POV or prejudices implicitly that he cannot control.)

So a little later, Simmons brings up the movie Cruising, which I have not seen, but he says is very good. Apparently, its a “ 1980 erotic crime thriller film written and directed by William Friedkin and starring Al Pacino” about a serial killer targeting gay men. Simmons brings this movie up to make the point that people are much more easily mobilized these days (so insightful...) and to say, further, that if the movie were released today it would have been boycotted heavily and possibly not released.

I find this to be a laughable take, but he goes on to say something very revealing in response to something Klosterman says. Chuck says that if Cruising were made in 2019, maybe it would be made by a gay director and/or have a gay star. And Simmons is like, oh so they’d anticipate these issues and get out in front of the controversy.

This was so revealing to me because it snaps into focus a few different domains Simmons occupies and shows he almost ‘code switches’ his thought process, unconsciously, depending on whatever ghost of a coherent thought happens to be haunting his mind in a given moment.

This is clearly Simmons the producer and media mogul. He wants to get this movie, Crusing, made in 2019. Logistically, he knows certain demographics will boycott the film and maybe prevent it from being released.

(By the way, there have been some movies prevented from being released, generally on the basis of a moral panic, but the most recent one I can think of is the Woody Allen Louis CK one which, who the fuck would want to see that anyway? I’m sure it would ‘make you think’... that CK and Allen are pieces of shit.)

This is not really a great place to come from as a critic or even person who runs the Ringer media empire. Speaking to the latter, obviously the Ringer is a vehicle to make money for its owners, but it does seem to have a more coherent, somewhat woke new media 3.0 purpose that’s not 100% cynical in the vein of, ‘hey cast a gay actor for this homophobic film so that it won’t get boycotted’. For the former, sure it would be something you’d note and maybe write about, but would it really ‘make you think’? It would make me think that the movie was a cynical piece of shit floating in the homophobic toilet bowl of American culture.

Drawing back even further, it just goes to show me at least that the majority of influencers in this apparently lamentable influencer culture still don’t really consider themselves influencers. The sort of way saying someone’s a “white male” is kind of offensive because it creates this contre-pied cognitive step where a white man actually has to identify as a subgroup of humanity and not the default setting, as it were, and realize that he has discursive and political motivations that aren’t just ‘natural law’ or something and are generally around to further his demographic’s self-interests.

Simmons constantly spouts this backward, establishment-protecting bullshit when it comes to entertainment - and with regard to everything else. The one arguably moral stand he took, to badmouth Roger Goodell on his ESPN podcast, had the effect of making him more famous and gave his flagging outsider status a little more life, allowing him to pivot to the Ringer. He and his site still slavishly cover football, despite making jokes (I guess?) about CTE and concussions.

There is not a large conclusion to all this except to get my thoughts out there. Like, I don’t think Simmons is evil or anything, but he’s totally unaware of his biases -- the same as anyone, I know.

It just galls me that I think he thinks he’s this establishment-wrecking poster boy for new media when he’s just the same old self-congratulatory, now-middle-aged white guy holding back progress in the name of art or a sophisticated critical view when it’s really about the bottom line and protecting conservative values.

[bmichael]

the idea of publishing an AIM interview with someone who wrote an album review... I can’t tell if it’s just me getting old, but I really miss those days of the internet

Things I Remember Writing: Animal Collective MPP

If you were reading music blogs in late 2008 you remember that people were getting pretty worked up about the upcoming Animal Collective album. A song or two trickled out; someone hacked Geologist’s email and sent a note to a blog asking that the record be leaked; the one or two print reviews that had already appeared were rapturous. It was a combination of “This record might be really good” and “This record exists, a small handful of people actually have it, but I can’t hear it.” It was a weird in-between time, I think, when records were expected to leak well in advance of release and the PR machinery hadn’t quite figure out how it worked.

I’d been asking for a copy for a while but no dice. It seemed likely that I would be reviewing it for Pitchfork, since I’d reviewed the last few AC-related releases and I good grasp on what they were about. And I was looking forward to it, since I knew it would be heavy on material heard live on the Strawberry Jam tour, which I’d seen a couple of times and which sounded interesting. 

And then finally, a day or two before our publishing break, I received my watermark. I shared it with a couple of people in the Pitchfork office. We all listened to it, and agreed that it was very good. We decided that I would review it. And since the release date was the first week in January, that it would run on the first day back.

Julie and I were going to Richmond to spend a week for the holidays. So we packed the car and started driving from Chicago. We took two days to get there. And for much of the way down, I listened to Merriweather Post Pavilion in the passenger seat on headphones while writing a draft of the review on my laptop. Once in a while, I’d take off the headphones and plug in the cassette jack adaptor and play a song for Julie to get her reaction. One, a Panda Bear song called “Daily Routine”, completely blew us away and we heard exactly the same thing in it. That coda–just couldn’t believe how beautiful it seemed in that car during that December on the drive south.

Julie wasn’t as sold on the rest of the album but I immersed myself in it. It was fun to be listening to this record and thinking about it while I was off the internet—I had no idea if it had leaked or if anyone else had heard it or what anyone in the world thought about it aside from the couple of people I’d briefly spoken to in the Pitchfork office. After all that build-up, during that drive, it was just me listening to the music and watching the landscape roll by, alone with my thoughts and this music and trying to put them together. It was obviously just another indie record but it felt significant; I thought I heard something special in it. 

By the second day I had something like 3,500 words written, just about the band and their trajectory and what I thought they were doing and how this music worked. Much of it was, I’m sure, terrible. But I had enough that I could carve a review out of what was there, which I later did. I gave it a high rating. We thought about giving it a 10 but decided against it (Pitchfork hadn’t given one in a long time).

And then I filed it, and then it ran, and MPP turned out to be a big deal, especially those first few weeks. A guy interviewed me about the review, which is pretty strange. It was an IM interview and I was typing fast and I asked him to correct my misspellings and the way they did so was by adding [sic] every time I messed something up (which was often). And then a week later HRO wrote something, and then another couple of weeks later Nick Sylvester wrote a long post on Riff Raff in response, and that post was partly about me and said some nice things even though I didn’t know Nick very well and had only met him a couple of times. One of the nice things involved riding in a car listening to music with other Pitchfork writers. And then New York magazine posted a “guide” to the whole thing.

It was an amusing, silly, and deeply weird moment, made even weirder when I tried to explain it all to the people in my life who didn’t care about music blogs (i.e. most of the people in my life). And while it was happening I kept thinking back to writing and listening in the front seat of my Toyota Corolla. 

[bmichael]

2019 happening

A somewhat modest writing goal I have for this year is to listen to an album from the Miles Davis Complete Columbia Recordings box set and write something about it. I plan on going in chronological order. Where it’s a live recording made in one year but released in another, I’ll go by the live recording date. Ex.: 1958 Miles was recorded in 1958 but released in 1974. That’s a pretty easy one. There are a few live albums culled from sets recorded across a few years. I believe I’ll go by the last year of the record date, but there won’t be a hard and fast rule, I think.

I believe the first entry (this week!) will be  In Paris Festival International de Jazz May, 1949 (rec. 1949, rel. 1977) [SRCS 9724]. I’ve already listened to this charming album a few times, but I’ll save my thoughts. 

[bmichael]

The Best Podcasts of 2018: A reactionary take, of course

They’re basically all longform journalism, and I don’t like it.

I know this is just one person’s view, but longform/truecrime/reporting is all I see on the charts and they’re what gets talked about frequently -- at least on my timeline. Larson’s intro mentions some non-news podcasts like Homecoming (a major label podcast, with Catherine Keener, Oscar Isaac, David Schwimmer, Amy Sedaris, and David Cross and an Amazon tv adaptation with even more star power) and Everything Is Alive (frankly not my thing, but at least it’s ‘out there’). The list proper is:

“In the Dark” - reporting

“Slow Burn” - true crime / reporting

“Cocaine & Rhinestones” - music true crime / reporting

“Articles of Interest” - not-reporting, sort of, but the write-up mentioned a standout episode covering women’s pockets, which, are awful but have also seen about ten widely-shared pieces on in the last year

“Trump, Inc.” - reporting

“Serial” - true crime / reporting

“Caliphate” - reporting

“The Promise” - reporting

“Caught” - reporting

“Bear Brook” - true crime

There’s nothing wrong with this list. It’s written by a journalist / writer and it acknowledges the work of creators in the same field. I haven’t listened to every podcast on the list, but I’ve listened to at least a couple episodes of about 8 of the entrees. I mostly find them stultifying at best, possibly malevolent at worst.

I understand media orgs taking advantage of a ‘new’ format. News was made to be podcast broadcast. But from the very most reactionary and over-solicitous or moralizing standpoint, I wonder if the world needs more news. I mean, I certainly don’t need more news, so I’m thinking the world must not, either. I was about to say that an episode of Cocaine & Rhinestones was useful to my understanding of the world when they had an episode about Jerry Lee Lewis, but that was actually a podcast called Disgraceland (similar to, possibly better than, C&R).

There’s news in the elevator. News on twitter. News, also, everywhere else on your phone. News on TV, on the radio, on podcasts, and also in print. There’s investigative journalism on the internet and also in books. That’s where history is, as well. 

(The other day, I had a heartbreaking realization reading a reddit thread on podcast recommendations, when someone was asking after a good podcast to cover things in the past but in the style of Serial, and they really meant they wanted to read a history book but apparently had never thought of that concept.)

To me, podcasts are special.

I’m not a format snob/freak, but there’s something to a well-executed idea that could only exist in a particular way. That’s why “You Look Nice Today” will always be the first/best podcast for me. It took great advantage of the format with quick, anti-temporal edits. Interstitial music/stingers. Weird, John Hodgman call-in bumpers. Its first episode was over 10 years ago, and in my opinion it still hasn’t been surpassed. Matched, maybe, but not surpassed.

I obviously have a particular kind of taste in, well, everything. I like involuted, meta, jokey shit. Mr. Show, Tristram Shandy, Gravity’s Rainbow, U Talkin' U2 To Me?.

But-- frame-breaking, format-pushing things exist in the only way they can. (Well, I guess the Tristram Shandy movie is pretty good.) I think, almost by definition, the ‘best’ podcast can’t be something you could just read as a transcript. At least, to get the most out of it.

So I guess for me, the best podcasts of 2018 are, in no special order,

“The Magnus Archives” -  X-Files-style monster of the week + larger plot stuff, but set in England. Yes, transcripts do exist for this show (and they exist for YLNT, I believe, and most of the others on my ‘list’), but it’s best consumed by listening. The voice acting is, *chef’s kiss*, very good. It’s startlingly well-put-together. From the first episode, there’s a larger-narrative throughline that connects everything. This througline doesn’t become apparent until around the beginning of season 3, which recently ended. And the format itself, like so many narrative podcasts, is self-aware. Ie, it’s a series of recordings by the characters in the podcast that have to be recordings for several plot reasons. But -- it’s not a typical and typically bad, “Hey this is a fictional (but in a Blair Witch kind of way) radio broadcast about a topic, omg what’s that, something scary!” The Magnus Archives does seem, at first, like it might be that. But it’s so much more.

“Ars Paradoxica” - Which leads pretty naturally to this podcast. A time-travel, uh, story. There are elements of action, romance, alternate history, and general drama. It finished this year, so you could binge all 32 episodes and get the full story. Again, there’s a plot reason why the episodes are composed of recordings by characters in the podcast. The overall reasoning isn’t quite as strong as in The Magnus Archives, but it’s still pretty solid. The voice acting and overall scope of this show is possibly better and larger than The Magnus Archives. I was beyond sad that it ended -- not the least because I really don’t like the other podcasts the creators/actors have put out. Oh well.

“Wolf 359″ - Another narrative podcast that ended this year. I highly recommend binging the 61 episodes of this tragicomic space station drama. Again, the voice acting is almost perfect and the writing is possibly better than the previous two. There’s a whipsmart blend of humor and tragedy. The finale makes clear why the podcast (in a meta way, within the narrative) exists and must exist as audio recordings. It’s quite clever and somewhat heartbreaking. I cannot recommend it enough.

“Doughboys″ - I think that most comedy podcasts wouldn’t work as written transcripts or in other formats, necessarily, but Doughboys is one of the most inherently podcast-y ones. A podcast about rating chain food restaurants should be pretty average, but this is not. The hosts, Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell, have a crackling, palpable loving hatred for themselves and each other that really only comes out by listening to them talk. There are weird audio components to every episodes, and the guest appearances are basically necessary in order to make something listenable. And to keep Wiger and Mitch from killing each other. It’s one of the best podcasts, possibly taking a step back this year from previous highs, but a slightly regressed Doughboys is still better than most other podcasts.

“R U Talkin' R.E.M. RE: ME?″ - Technically a new podcast, although it shares the same feed with U Talkin' U2 To Me?. This podcast fits basically the same description as the above. Adam Scott and Scott Aukerman listened to every REM album and talked about them - the same as they did with every U2 album over the last few years. I don’t think they have as many interesting ideas or good jokes about REM (evidenced by their inability to keep up with the joke band member names and Scott Aukerman’s awful taste in REM albums) but 80% of UTU2TM? is still 100% hilarious.

“The Relentless Picnic” - It’s a little hard to describe what this podcast is about. It’s like if Saint John’s College (in insular, microscopically-matriculated Great Books Program school) made a news program. And yeah, not the time the president of SJC went on fucking Tucker Carlson. The audio editing is interesting and advanced the story. It’s a little bit like YLNT with how it’s edited out of chronological order and is about three friends calling each other on skype and recoding it. I still have a hard time telling the three of them apart, but I’m getting better. The extra episodes on Patreon (oh, nb, I support this, Doughboys, The Magnus Archives, and used to support Wolf 359 on Patreon) are worth it. If you want to hear people talk about current events while usefully integrating Kafka and Hegel, then this podcast is for you.

“Proof” - New to 2018! This is by far the most conventional podcast on this list, but conventionality isn’t a dirty word. It’s like Serial + America’s Test Kitchen. I don’t think it’s so self-aware as to have internally calibrated itself like that, but I could be wrong. I mean, the name itself is so grave, but it’s also a food pun. The only thing I dislike about the show are the native ads for Bob’s Red Mill (sidenote: what sort of psychopath are you, Sarah Larson, to enjoy Quip/Squarespace/Zip Recruiter ads? -- oh, a realistic on who’s employed by the media industry that’s fully funded by such advertising? Ok) but at least host Bridget Lancaster tries to make them interesting. Really, the first episode about the secret history of celery 100% sold me on the podcast, and none of the subsequent episodes have reached its heights, but it’s a nice example of an investigative type podcast that doesn’t have to have some sort of dire newshook to it.

OK - that’s it. I obviously have a particular taste in podcasts, but I’m glad I didn’t repeat any recommendations from my last list back in 2013. I still listen regularly to Bill Simmons, Comedy Bang Bang, Zach Lowe, etc. - a lot of stuff I’ve listened to for a very long time. You end up feeling like you’ve ossified, and I probably have to a large degree. If anyone has other recommendations, reblog or reply with them.