B Michael Tumblr

B Michael Tumblr is the personal weblog of B Michael Payne.

[bmichael]

I have never been the type of person who remembers athletes' numbers. I know Josh Allens' because he's ubiquitous around here. Jordan, Lebron, etc. I had forgotten that Ken Griffey Jr.'s number was 24 until I saw this hat, which I shortly thereafter bought.

Obviously, everything's too expensive these days. 2026 is the year I am not buying myself anything (non-essential). This is the second of four things I've so far bought myself (non-essential). I got a really good deal on it, especially since it's one of the older Ebbets Field hats before they were acquired and the construction and materials are quite nice. I really ended up saving a few hundred dollars, though, as I almost bought this beautiful chore jacket instead. I found the chore jacket on Alex Kwa's site, which I visited probably because I was online window shopping Outlier stuff, which, more to come. Before pulling trig on the chore coat, I looked online for some notes on fit, and came across this Reddit post about the chore coat, which also featured the Ken Griffey hat.

And that's how I saved a few hundred dollars by buying a non-essential ball cap (the 100th one I own probably).

Getting to know yourself is so important. When I'm locked into a manic-like shopping and research spin, it's almost like I have to buy something. Even though 99% of these sessions don't really end in a purchase, you fall into enough of them and you end up buying way too much shit you don't need.

Writing up this story is my way of doing 'penance' for the purchase, but I really don't regret it. I think I spent 25 bucks on the hat, which was a total steal. But, I think, the endless ability and accessibility to research and online shopping has been utterly disastrous to me. I've always been a coveter and a window shopper and an outside-my-means-liver. Online shopping is like my version of smartphone sports gambling. Utterly arresting, socially acceptable, financially ruinous.

It's really funny to me that most of the people who see me in this cap think it's for A24.

[bmichael]

ER

It started with The Pitt, of course. A real TV show, made in real TV show proportions, made on a real TV show schedule. While I was waiting for a new episode to 'air' on HBO Max, or right after finishing one, I turned on the ER pilot episode. It immediately blew me away. Its feature film length also made me stop halfway through, and I never finished it.

The pilot was based on a screenplay Michael Crichton wrote in 1974 based on his experience as a Harvard med student. Did you know Michael Crichton went to medical school? I didn't! Elite institutions are GOATED at producing dumbasses. See: this American Journal of Medicine editorial from a Crichton classmate about how the ER creator's dumbass pseudoscience novel State of Fear made a lot of good points about climate science being fake...

In any case, the pilot is quite good.

The arc leading up to Julianna Margulies' character attempting suicide is completely absent. The way it bops between the hospital and Anthony Edwards' character's outside life is disorientating. But it's ultimately a potent fusion of drama and melodrama that makes for incredible TV viewing.

I'm watching the rest of ER now. I'm through season 1 episode 5, and every one has been good to great. The cinematography and lighting are unusually strong. The writing, especially for Eriq La Salle's character, is outstanding. I was a little too young to be interested in ER when it was first on. I'm so glad it's easy to stream right now. It's probably more entertaining than The Pitt if I'm being honest. Way less libcodedly tendentious at the very least.

The weirdest thing about watching ER for the first time right now is that there's no 'rewatch content ecosystem' around the show. There's only one rewatch podcast, and it has series-long spoilers from the first episode. I don't see tons of YouTube videos about the show (unlike similar videos about, like, Lost or Game of Thrones). No one on social media is talking about it. Even though it seems like a pretty fertile show for creating loads of that type of content.

The main theme and credits go harder than they have any right to!

[bmichael]

Do you wanna fuck? Like you know I do?

— "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"

I've started doing this thing that feels a little unsafe but is edifying. My phone, on a mount in my car, is perfectly in my eyeline to the road, and on my phone when I'm driving I usually have the Music app open with the lyrics on display. Driving a lot, this practice has helped me learn (and, more importantly, sing along to) the lyrics to a lot more music.

Overall, I'm just not a lyrics guy. Except for when I am. Which is like 1% of the time.

So it's unsurprising that my ignorance of this Vampire Weekend lyric is almost old enough to enlist in the army. But still, seeing this lyric today caught me out.

"Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" is a 2008 song that I've listened to, IDK, a bazillion times? And I never understood the lyrics to be "Do you wanna fuck?"1 At least now, circa 2026, the line feels very un-Vampire Weekend-y. But it makes sense, them being young'uns and all at the time. It's also a clever inversion of how this type of song usually goes. (Or is it?) I remember reading a Dave Hickey essay in Air Guitar, I think it's the very first one, about how love songs are where the cultural rules of courtships are written. And "do you wanna fuck?" feels like a very mid-2000s type of way to court. Or maybe that's jsut because I was in my early 20s at the time. Being unexpected, it's a really fun flip to how courtly and spry the song sounds. Like, you'd expect a more direct, raunchy line from a song that sounds direct and raunchy. right?

I also feel like there's some sort of connection to how this video ends and the I Think You Should Leave sketch "Baby Cries," for which Vampire Weekend provided a song. That sketch talks about the attitude and impunity with which young people go through life, and it similarly ends on a beach at night. I don't know, maybe I'm grasping, or maybe in the a-temporal/cross-temporal/completely timeless cultural galaxy we occupy, it makes sense to say a music video from 2008 and a comedy sketch from 2021 work together to make a strong point about time.

To be fair, I don't really know any of the lyrics to Vampire Weekend songs up until around Modern Vampires of the City_and really really _Father of the Bride, which might be my favorite album of all time (for now). ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

[bmichael]

Convoy S21E MAO white 21700 flashlight

2026, for a variety of reasons, is/was finally the year I would buy nothing.1 Well, I failed on about January 3rd, although this purchase kind of straddles essential and inessential. I have other flashlights, though none quite like this. And it's replacing my previous Convoy S21 that stopped working for mysterious reasons.

As penance for buying something I don't need, I'm writing about it in this space. So here goes.

The Convoy S21E is, in my limited experience, a very nice flashlight—especially for the price, which in this case, is $26.67 with shipping. To the non-flashlight-freak (me and most people), this flashlight has ridiculous throw2 and brightness. It fits in the palm of my hand and is easy to pocket. And this particular flashlight has a cool-looking white MAO (MicroArcOxidation) coating.

I'm starting to think of white products as more luxe than black ones, a flip of the traditional take. White is harder to keep clean, and is much less common, at least when it comes to electronics and accessories these days. That's why I chose the white Nothing headphone (1). White feels like a flex now.

I just pulled trig on another purchase—this one I definitely don't need. But since it's something I didn't previously own, I'm going to wait until I receive it to review it.

Buying nothing inessential like, say, 4K Blu-rays... not that I have a problem with that. ↩︎

"Throw" is a delightfully literal flashlight geek term for how far the light of the flashlight goes. How far it's thrown. ↩︎

[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]

@bmichael on twitter (@[email protected])

9 Posts, 57 Following, 1 Follower · I thought you was in Hawaii! ... A lot of people think a lot of things about Hawaii.

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?