The night I ate a quarter ounce of mushrooms and lost a friend

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - Cat Power
Silence Kit - Pavement
Real Love (Narcisse Remix) - Delorean
Tomboy - Panda Bear
Where I'm Going - Cut Copy
Phantom Pt. II - Justice
North American Scum - LCD Soundsystem
Summer - Modest Mouse

The night I ate pig's brains at the tapas restaurant

Idioteque - Amanda Palmer
Revival - Deerhunter
Cause=Time - Broken Social Scene
I Can Change - LCD Soundsystem
Psychic Chasms (Apache Beat Remix) - Neon Indian
Slow Motion - Panda Bear
10 Mile Stereo - Beach House
staring at the sun - TV on the Radio

When I stop dwelling in my own head, the world seems ripe for some living

Younger Us - Japandroids
Gold Soundz - Pavement
6669 (I don't know if you know) - Neon Indian
Phantom - Justice
Breaking It Up (Punks Jump Up Remix) - Lykke Li
Selfish Boy - Caribou
Little Brown Haired Girl - Frankie Rose and the Outs
Boy - Ra Ra Riot

Quote

'If I'm not positive, I think I'll go crazy.'
-Thom Yorke

Mr. Rogers

Some awesome Mr. Rogers stories I've read over the years:

* * *

I worked with a guy who once went with a group of friends to Pittsburgh, where their plans consisted of staying up the entire night, hitting various bars, and drinking until they were slobbering and stupid. The next morning, as they were walking (wobbling) down the street, they happened to come upon a group of people leaving a church service. Mr. Rogers was at the center of that group. My co-worker, forgetting everything in that moment except the unexpected amazement of seeing his childhood hero, shouted "Mr. Rogers!" and ran straight up to him. Imagine the looks of horror on the faces of the other parishioners, confronted by this apparition - wild-eyed, clothes wrinkled and smelling of smoke, skin and breath reeking of alcohol.

Mr. Rogers just reached out and pulled him into a hug. My co-worker started to cry, and Mr. Rogers talked quietly to him. What was said? He never would tell us.

---
Source:
http://www.metafilter.com/79055/Can-you-say-Hero-T ...

* * *

During his acceptance speech for the Daytime Emmys Lifetime Achievement Award, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence." And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, "I'll watch the time," ...

One second, two seconds, three seconds and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, "May God be with you" to all his vanquished children.

---
Source:
http://www.metafilter.com/61699/Neighborhood-of-Ma ...

* * *

And the last one -- long, but worth it:

* * *

You know, it's quite a strange thing. The single most common adjective applied to Mister Rogers in this and other thread is the word 'creepy'?

I think I know why he strikes people as creepy. It's because his isn't at all 'cool'. There is no cynicism, no irony, no condescension in him at all. He is not simply unhip, he is ahip. And this is what people calling him creepy are picking up on.

We are conditioned to traffic in cool. You have to look cool, not look nice or distinguished or presentable, but cool. But it's all so generic. Everyone seems to have the same new haircut that no one 5 years ago had. We all have the same cynical politics.

Something about the counterculture from the 60's is still with us but it has been co-opted into a form of synchronized periodic obsolescence and mockery of that which came before. There is something fundamentally anti-intellectual about this, but I can't quite articulate it. There some element of arrogance there. Like everyone is perpetually 18.

Cool is America's code, and I really do think this is an American problem, because cool is propagated mainly though mass media, and there is no greater media saturated culture on earth than America's. Will I look cool wearing this? Will I sound cool saying this, or reading this or doing this. We're committing mass murder in other parts of the world because somebody figured out how to make violence cool and tough-talk politics cool, and then they combined the too. Swagger is cool. Cowboys and fighter jets and JDAMs and war porn are cool. So that's what we have. We are the Kingdom of Whatever.

Of course he hated ad-libbing on camera, because ad-libbing on camera is inexcusably lazy. It's what you do so you don't have to write or rehearse. Actors and comedians and musicians improvise as a way of living within a moment that is in some way artificial. A method actor may improvise because he is trying to become the character, but he isn't the character to begin with. A Jazz musician improvises because while the structure and the changes are the same, and the audience is familiar with them, the particular moment of performance is not, and that has it's own emotional context.

Mister Rogers was the same guy, so why improvise? The show wasn't about his character, it was about the kids, os you have to work out ahead of time how best to communicate with the child viewers. Everything was planned.

He talks slowly not because kids are dumb but because as studies have shown, children's brains are considerably more active than adults', and they need time to return to the original thought communicated to them after branching off in multitudinous directions.

The puppets? Puppets are good because they are considerably smaller than the human actors around them, and thus kids perceive them as safe. They look like toys. Contrast this with a giant seven foot all yellow bird, and ask yourself which inspired more nightmares.

The show is glacially paced and had the same structure with the same things happening in the same order because children respond to structure and routine is a source of comfort, particularly in children whose lives were anything but predictable.

Maybe that's what cool is - withdrawing from the context of one's life into an artificial one, in which the cool perceives itself to be somehow outside of reality, looking in and commenting on it. But this isn't insight, it's not reflecting on the world. It's standing at the edge of the world sniping into it.

Mister Rogers isn't creepy. CSI with is gruesome bloody corpses every Thursday at promptly 9:14 EST is creepy. Thirty million people looking at that and snaking on chips while they watch is creepy.

Listening to some rapper sing about his genitals and sexual conquests is creepy. Approach crowds of people and talk to them about the aroused state of your genitals, and watch how quickly you end up in a squad car. But somehow it's ok on TV because...why exactly?

Watching a war unfold on television in near real time is beyond creepy. It is obscene. You watch people screaming over their dead loved ones, and then you turn it off and go have dinner, or go to bed? No empathy, no revulsion. What the hell kind of civilization is this?

You know, I watched some 9-11 footage on youtube the other day (because I'm a masochist, apparently), and it occured to me that in the 6 years since it happened, I've never once heard anyone say "I'm sorry for those people who are so consumed by hate for people they've never met and places they've never been. What can we do to lift that burden from them?"

Because that isn't cool. That's being a pussy (or a fag if you are on FreeRepublic). There's no posture to be struck there, no pose. It's something that has to be done in earnest, and that's what's been lacking in the American culture.

Think about the Pope, entering the cell to confront his assassin. He forgave him, we all know that. But can you imagine the conversation? Can you imagine either someone being so perceptive that they can reach into a perfect stranger and expose their soul, or someone whose personality is so shallow that their emotions or ideologies are so shallow that any attempt to probe their depth displaces them entirely?

Mr. Rogers may have been the last earnest man.

New 18 week marathon training plan

I'm switching my plan yet again to Hal Higdon's Intermediate I Marathon training plan.

Week	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
1	cross	3 m run	5 m run	3 m run	rest	5 m pace	8
2	cross	3 m run	5 m run	3 m run	rest	5 m run	9
3	cross	3 m run	5 m run	3 m run	rest	5 m pace	6
4	cross	3 m run	6 m run	3 m run	rest	6 m pace	11
5	cross	3 m run	6 m run	3 m run	rest	6 m run	12
6	cross	3 m run	5 m run	3 m run	rest	6 m pace	9
7	cross	4 m run	7 m run	4 m run	rest	7 m pace	14
8	cross	4 m run	7 m run	4 m run	rest	7 m run	15
9	cross	4 m run	5 m run	4 m run	rest	7 m pace	11
10	cross	4 m run	8 m run	4 m run	rest	8 m pace	17
11	cross	5 m run	8 m run	5 m run	rest	8 m run	18
12	cross	5 m run	5 m run	5 m run	rest	8 m pace	13
13	cross	5 m run	8 m run	5 m run	rest	5 m pace	20
14	cross	5 m run	5 m run	5 m run	rest	8 m run	12
15	cross	5 m run	8 m run	5 m run	rest	5 m pace	20
16	cross	5 m run	6 m run	5 m run	rest	4 m pace	12
17	cross	4 m run	5 m run	4 m run	rest	3 m run	8
18	cross	3 m run	4 m run	rest	rest	2 m run	race

Switching marathon training programs

I'm switching my training program to Hal Higdon's Novice 18 week marathon training program:

Week	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun
1	rest	3 m run	5 m pace	3 m run	rest	8	cross
2	rest	3 m run	5 m run	3 m run	rest	9	cross
3	rest	3 m run	5 m pace	3 m run	rest	6	cross
4	rest	3 m run	6 m pace	3 m run	rest	11	cross
5	rest	3 m run	6 m run	3 m run	rest	12	cross
6	rest	3 m run	6 m pace	3 m run	rest	9	cross
7	rest	4 m run	7 m pace	4 m run	rest	14	cross
8	rest	4 m run	7 m run	4 m run	rest	15	cross
9	rest	4 m run	7 m pace	4 m run	rest	11	cross
10	rest	4 m run	8 m pace	4 m run	rest	17	cross
11	rest	5 m run	8 m run	5 m run	rest	18	cross
12	rest	5 m run	8 m pace	5 m run	rest	13	cross
13	rest	5 m run	5 m pace	5 m run	rest	19	cross
14	rest	5 m run	8 m run	5 m run	rest	12	cross
15	rest	5 m run	5 m pace	5 m run	rest	20	cross
16	rest	5 m run	4 m pace	5 m run	rest	12	cross
17	rest	4 m run	3 m run	4 m run	rest	8	cross
18	rest	3 m run	2 m run	rest	rest	2 m run

Hal's the Author of Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, which I'm reading. His site is very informative.

you have to do stuff that average people don't understand, because those are the only good things --Andy Warhol

Waters of Nazareth - Justice
TEQUILLA RLC STRATO REMIX 16 BIT - M.I.A
Windstorm - School Of Seven Bells
Conversation 16 - The National
White Magic - ceo
When the World Comes to an End - Dirty Projectors and Bjork
Maximalist - Baths
Say No To Love - Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, the

I know it's a lie, I want it to be true

everything is gonna be alright - ceo
Too Young - Phoenix
Pap Smear - Crystal Castles
Collect Call - Metric
Back To Cali Gurls (Katy Perry Remix) - Notorious B.I.G
King Of The Beach - Wavves
One (Build & Clancy Remix) - Yeasayer
Gallery Piece Stems (Minitel - Of Montreal vs Minitel Rose

We consume the affected martyrdom of our purported idols and spit it back in mocking defiance.

Swoon (Boys Noize Summer Mix) - Chemical Brothers
Don't Turn The Lights On - Chromeo
Girlfriend - Phoenix
Paris (Aeroplane Remix) - Friendly Fires ft. Au Revoir Simone
The Reeling - Passion Pit
Mandy - Ratatat
Honey Trap (Le Matos remix) - We Have Band
Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective

Everythings easy when you never have to choose

Armistice - Phoenix
Get Innocuous! - LCD Soundsystem
Here Sometimes - Blonde Redhead
Hold On (feat. Amber Coffman) (Sub Focus Remix) - Rusko
Coquet Coquette - of Montreal
Folds In Your Hands - Passion Pit
Expectation - Tame Impala
We Don't Want Your Body - Stars

Quote

Youth is something to be reckoned with, despite how often it's overplayed. We forget how young so many geniuses were when they made their mark. In 1905, when Einstein's annus mirabilis began, he was 25. One of my favorite things to do when a friend turns 30 is to say, "Well, you're now older than every member of the Beatles when they broke up." The implication being, "Remember what they did with their young adulthood? What the hell have you done with yours?"

When you're a kid, every time you have an idea, you think you're the first person in history to think it. There's serious power in this misconception. When you feel like all your thoughts are original, you burn to share them with the world. And then, it turns out, people with talent sometimes do have something unique and valuable to offer. And the fearlessness engendered by the cockiness that comes from youthful ignorance is what gets their ideas out there. That's how you get your Bob Dylans (he turned 25 a week after Blonde on Blonde came out). You get the feeling that maybe Jay-Z knows the "truth" that it's all been said. It may well be true, but it weighs down his art like an anchor. Meanwhile, Lil Wayne burns on.

- Mark Richardson, Resonant Frequency #50

Quote

Pitchfork: Okay, you're old. How do you think your age informs your music?

JM: I think it's a huge part of it. I've kind of been thinking about this a lot lately. Because for a while I was really angry. ‘Cause I was like, "What the fuck? We should suck. We should be being wiped off the stage by kids every night." I just didn't get it. I spent years saying that and being kind of wound up. Like, where the fuck are the kids? Then I started thinking that energy that used to be kids-- early rock and then punk, what was really going on was that there was no marketing to kids.

If you made advertisements, you made them to 40- or 50-year-olds. Because they had money, they had jobs. You didn't advertise to kids. The only thing that was targeted to kids was like, funny hair products and rock'n'roll. So you had this one thing to navigate, and that was where all your energy was.

But now kids buy shit. They really buy shit. Kids buy designer stuff. So you're being constantly pounded by marketing. And if you want to be a rebel, well, there's rebel clothing companies. There's rebel stick-on tattoos. You can get a rebel skateboard. You just pick your rebel mode and there's a whole online shopping network that you can be a part of. So kids may look punk or feel punk, but what they're kind of doing is the same as like, being really swept up in high school sports or something.

o I just think it takes a couple decades to kind of clear your brain now. So it makes more sense to me that I could find my footing when I was 30 instead of when I was 19. It seems a little more clear. You know, novelists are older now. Things are happening later in people's lives. They're kind of living lives and then creating things about the lives they've lived. Rather than being an artiste at an early age and coming out with a ball of fire. That energy has been co-opted because you haven't immunized yourself yet against media. It's easier to get swept up things then take a couple of years to get over your, like, indie rock hangover. I'm scraping the fucking Quarterstick Records crust out of my eyes when I'm like, 27. You know, "Why am I playing in 5/7? How is that fun?"

Pitchfork: Do you feel like it's an advantage in any way? Just being able to draw on much more life experience than someone younger?

JM: I think it's an advantage to a certain degree because of that. But on the other hand, I get tired. And I get sick on tour. And I want to go home. You're also part of a machine that's set up to really whip your teenage ego into a frenzy. On the one hand, that's awesome, because you're kind of immune to it. But on the other hand it's not as much fun. It's like being an adult at an amusement park designed for kids. I'm like, "I can't fit on any of these rides."

-James Murphy

Notes from vacation in Cancun

We leave for Cancun at 5 in the morning, I'm still half awake at the airport and fall asleep on the three hour plane ride with the baby squirming in my lap. We arrive in Cancun in the middle of a thunderstorm, which is due to tropical storm Alex happening somewhere to the east of us, I think. we check in and take a cab ride to our timeshare, my brothers and I immediately start drinking. My cousin and uncle and cousin's girlfriend arrive later that night. We drink some more at the hotel bar - I keep calling it a hotel but it's a timeshare, because it reminds me of a luxury hotel.

The second day it's still tropical storm weather, overcast but humid and hot as hell. I go running on the beach in 'aqua socks'. The sky looks bad ass. Hardly any people on the beach. Later we go out to eat at one of the many Mexican restaurants here. There are no small portions here, everythng is huge. The margaritas are as big as your head. It is like this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I came here 10 pounds overweight because I've been lazy about dieting and working out lately. I feel fat and bloated all day long, and will probably leave here another 10 pounds heavier. I've had body image problems my entire life, this experience isn't helping. I can't believe I've been training for a marathon for a year and a half and I still feel fat in my swim suit. I go swimming in my sports watch and discover that it is water resistant and not 'water proof'. I've gone through 3 sports watches this year.

K. gets mad when I go out drinking with my brothers, I understand. It's hard to take care of the baby alone, especially since she's pregnant and it's really hot out. I come home late and crawl into bed reeking of alcohol and cigarettes. Baby gets us up at 4 in the morning, she jumps up and immeediately wants to play. I cam hear her tugging at me at the side of the bed saying 'Daddy, get up!'. K. usually get sup early with her and keeps her company on the deck while everybody else sleeps. Our balcony overlooks the pool and the ocean. On the third day, the sun comes out.

You can't buy gum in Cancun? Whats up with that. Also CNN World news sucks. Glen Beck sucks. We only brought a couple dvds with us - N. plays Alvin and the Chipmunks all morning (The Squesakquel, not the first one) - by the end of the week we all know the movie by heart. Since the weather is out we lounge by the pool. The pool is the greatest invention I've seen in a long while - imagine a huge bar in the middle of the pool - people sit in bar stools in the water and order drinks and food. Everything is charged to our card, at the end of the trip we'll get hit with a huge bill.

We've been watching movies on my laptop before we fall asleep, I've been dozing off with my contacts in. K. tells me that my eye will get infected. One day last week I wake up and my eye is in fact infected - it's puffed up and red and itchy, and there's pus coming out of it. I take my contacts out and haven't worn them in almost two weeks while my eye heals up. I'm on vacation anyway, not much need for me to do some close reading. As a consequence, I sit by the pool and admire the bikini bodies - since I'm basically blind, I have no way of knowing if I'm admiring a 25 year old woman or a 12 year old girl. I also can't see faces, so everyone is beautiful.

K. and I get a couples massage at the spa, it wasn't the best massage I've ever had but K. enjoyed it. I go running - walking sometimes - on the beach and curse my bloated body. There are plenty of hot women here. Maybe my body is fine and my body image is just so distorted that I'm blowing the situation way out of proportion - like when you see an anorexic girl and she's like, 'I'm so fat'. Tuesday nigth we take a cab out to the middle of downtown Cancun, to this restaurant where they have guys juggling fire and balancing like 5 margaritas on thei rheads. Nobody believes in air conditioning out here, I feel bloated and miserable a lot of the time. N. is having a great time, so is her grandma. That's fine I guess, how I'm feeling is not important.

I take a couple of hours out in the middle of the week and check my email and take care of something that broke at work. The internet is very spotty out here - I have to sit in a certain area of the main lobby in order to get even a decent signal. At the beginning of the week I think about my job a lot. By Friday I feel much more relaxed, I still think about my career but more in an abstract sense, making plans to take certification exams next month. I still feel basically hopeful about most things, including my career. Despite all my self doubts and all the mistakes I've made in the past, I feel confident in my abilities and in the future. My wife and family have changed me.

One night my brothers and cousins take a cab into the downtown area and go out to the local clubs. I want to go but K. is very sick so I stay in to keep her company. In the morning they show me cell phone videos they take while out at the clubs - picure after picture of half naked go go dancers on tables and stripper looking girls pouring drinks down my brother's throats. I'm filled with intense jealousy.

My brother and I remix each others songs in Ableton. My brother does mash ups of old 70s disco songs, they sound pretty good actually. I come up with parts of original songs. On Thurs., my wife and I take a tour of some Mayan ruins and I think about music the entire time. I spend a lot of my free time working in Ableton with my headphones on, my wife gets annoyed by this. Last night we went to this lobster restaurant, I had a ton of drinks and a vanilla mousse for dessert with strawberries. The restaurant has a deck overlooking a lagoon and we wave to alligators as they swim around us.

We woke up late today. We went swimming in the pool with N. all day. My baby is by far the most beautiful creature at the pool, on the beach, in this general vicinity. And I'm not just saying that because I'm totally biased. She charms people whereever she goes, everybody compliments us on our gorgeous little girl. It will probably always be like this for her. We watch Astroboy on DVD and I wonder why it's 2010 and we don't have fighting robots. Tomorrow we fly home and we go back to our regular lives. I kind of miss my neighborhood in Chicago, with its Midwestern trees and Midwestern parks filled with Chicago people, that's not so humid. Looking forward to getting back to work and back to training for the upcoming race. I guess that means it was a successful vacation.