Happy and safe running today, NYC!

Seven years ago this weekend I went to New York, saw some shows, had dinner with some lifelong friends, and ... oh, there’s something else I’m forgetting here ... shows ... dinner ... yes! That’s it! I ran my seventh (and so far last) marathon! With Jared from Subway! Well, not really WITH him; Subway was not going to let him embarrass the company with any kind of marathon-related scandal so they had him running literally in a ring of elite runners who made sure he crossed the finish line ... right in front of me. The jerk. He went on to pursue other scandals soon after the marathon, while I went on to curse my decision to leave all my cash in my hotel room during the marathon so I had to hobble more than two miles around marathon blockades from Central Park West to East 45th Street after the run because I couldn’t pay for a cab. But Woody Allen saw me cross the finish line, so the entire race was like a red carpet gala. I even took home a big shiny award, which I self-congratulatorily wore along with many of my crippled marathon brethren to LAX the next day.

Of course, all of this was back when the only thing runners had to focus on was the joy of running through 26.2 miles of cheering crowds in all five NYC boroughs and not being wounded and murdered by terrorists. The 2017 NYC marathon is happening as we speak, under 26.2 miles of heavy security — a week after multiple pedestrians were murdered in a terrorist attack in lower Manhattan. I’m sitting here in Iowa unable to protect today’s runners so each one can experience the same euphoric joy I did when I ran, but I know we’re all putting our trust in the extended local law enforcement to keep everyone safe. I don’t know if I know anyone who’s running today, but my heart is with everyone, and I’m excitedly cheering from afar in the hopes that today’s marathon is as thrilling — and safe — as mine was for every runner.

No! Wire! Clock! Hands! Ever!

Cedar Rapids public radio has distressingly meager music offerings on a Saturday afternoon:

88.3: A meandery improvisational jazz combo featuring a dyspeptic saxophone, a trumpeter who has recently discovered how to triple-tongue relentlessly for 36 relentless measures relentlessly, a keyboardist who’s clearly terrified to improvise beyond a dotted-quarter/eighth/dotted-quarter/eighth rhythm, and more dyspeptic saxophone to mask the trumpeter’s tongue-surgery screams

91.7: That one opera where heartbreaking circumstances propel a bunch of people with vibratos tall enough to drive a truck through into a labyrinth of unrequited love, totally plausible misunderstandings, a silly song sung by a person in a ridiculous hat, a fully staged ballet that acts as an Artful Metaphor for people who need to have plot points re-explained to them by waifish women in tulle and high (or low, depending on the contextual emotional-continuum level of anguish) hair buns, atonal recitative that it a totally productive replacement for Earnest Dialogue, three totally plausible deaths, and an emotionally triumphant High C Of Self Actualization

90.9: WHAT THE HELL IS THAT HILLBILLY-ASS NOISE YOU’RE PLAYING?

Fortunately, I now have the Amazon Music app on my phone so I can dig that beat, stomp my feet, dig be-bop and never stop down in Birdland whenever the need arises. Yes, indeed I do.

Gym math

Residual headache + pre-workout shake jitters + chronic elbow tendinitis flareup = only vertical, non-elbow-using activities at the gym = no options but leg day = certain messy death at the squat rack

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

Day 4 of 7

Seven days of black and white photos about me. No people. No explanations.

Ever had a headache so bad that the pain went down your spine?

Want mine?

Day 3 of 7

Seven days of black and white photos about me. No people. No explanations.

Let’s hear it for the Rainbow Tour!

I was up way past my bedtime at callbacks last night so I didn't go to the gym this morning so I have no new chapter to report in the penny-dreadful saga of The Mystery Secret Gym Boyfriend With The Beguilingly Handsome Calves(C).

[Private note to The Mystery Secret Gym Boyfriend With The Beguilingly Handsome Calves(C) so don't any of you snoopy, gossipy Facebook friends read this because as I just clearly said it's private and I've decided I'm even going to whisper-type it so you won't even know I'm saying it so mind your own beeswax: I SHOULD BE AT THE GYM TOMORROW AT 1:00 IN CASE YOU HAPPEN TO MAYBE WANT TO PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PERHAPS ADJUST YOUR SATURDAY SCHEDULE AND BE THERE AT THE SAME TIME I PROMISE NOT TO MENTION BREAD. OOPS.]

So here's an interim gym-related news item that I am selflessly providing for you until I have a chapter three to report about The Mystery Secret Gym Boyfriend With The Beguilingly Handsome Calves(C): As you know, I'm still on my Top 14 Most Active Gym Members From The Week Of November 3, 2015, Worldwide Victory Tour (see chart above). But Facebook tells me today's my two-year anniversary of earning my scepter and tiara, and I wanted to take a moment to remember the humble beginnings from a more innocent time where it all began. So a moment of silence, please.

I SAID SILENCE. Shut up already. Jeez.

Now. I'm heading back out on my Top 14 Most Active Gym Members From The Week Of November 3, 2015, Worldwide Victory Tour with stops this weekend in Wahoo, NE, and What Cheer, IA, but -- as just a casual, means-nothing, there's-really-no-useful-reason-to-even-mention-it closing thought -- I SHOULD BE AT THE GYM TOMORROW AT 1:00. Ahem. Bread. Oops.

Flashback Friday: Long Lost Lap Love Edition

I used to have a good kitty who sat on my lap and purred. Now I have a broken kitty who hides under the furniture and barfs.

Unfortunately, it never goes out

I hadn’t counted on being able to stop at home between work and my Sunday in the Park with George callback tonight. Now I’m tearing through my meager sartorial trousseau and obsessively rethinking my callback wardrobe. I need to look stuffy and reserved enough to be a plausible Jules yet athletic and devastatingly handsome enough to be discovered and fanboy profiled in some dreary socialistic periodical. I think I’ll wear something nice with swans.

Day 2 of 7

Seven days of black and white photos about me. No people. No explanations.

Second day. More advanced.

So Mystery Secret Gym Boyfriend was at the gym again today with his Beguiling Masculine CalvesTM. I was with my trainer so it would have been weird to just walk away from my workout and abruptly introduce myself by saying something mortifying like “My name’s Jake. Are those your calves? I like bread.” Just like yesterday, he kept totally to himself during his workout, but my trainer had me doing legs and while I was on the quad extension machine he yelled from across the gym to ask if I was using the squat rack, which tells me three things: 1) He noticed I was doing legs. 2) He’s considerate and polite. 3) We should have a June wedding.

But there are three more things that have left me in a ponder: 1) I hadn’t been anywhere near the squat rack, which is so far from where I was doing quads that you need a passport and a Silkwood scrubdown to get to it. 2) There are two squat racks right next to each other and neither had weights loaded so his question had only one transparent purpose and that purpose was to ask me how many cats we should get when we move in together. 3) Maybe the wedding should be earlier than June. Like this Saturday.

Anyway, he was doing planks as I left the gym, and don’t nobody wanna have a conversation with a stranger while counting seconds during planks. So I’ll just have to wear a different marathon shirt to the gym tomorrow to impress him with my Total Jock JocknessTM. Which I totally didn’t spend time picking out this morning for that very purpose. That would just be bread.

Looks like someone had a rough night of arabesqueing dans le rue

I can relate to rough nights. This is the second time I’ve had to get up to pee. But I’m checking my phone with only one eye open so I’m still technically at least half asleep, dans le lit.

I am not asleep like I should be

... because this combination is extremely cool and ain’t nobody in this house gonna get any sleep until I learn at least the first 32 counts.

Also because the dude is cute.

Also because he’s a very patient but purposeful teacher. And he always hits the floor with a solid THWAP!

Also because he's cute.

When you wish upon a star

Does this Captain America shield hanging on my bedroom door make me seem gay? Be honest.

Day 1 of 7

A number of people have challenged me to post seven days of black and white photos about my life, but until just now I did not know 1) how on earth I was going to take black and white photos and then somehow get them on my phone or computer so I could post them on Facebook or my blog or 2) that my phone has a photo-editing function to turn color photos into black and white. THANKS FOR COLLUDING TO KEEP THAT A SECRET FROM ME, PEOPLE. Anyway, as you probably know, the challenge is to post seven photos that illustrate your life but with no people and no explanations. I feel weird passing on the challenge to specific other people I call out by name because what if they reject me in the same way they concealed basic phone functionality information from me but if you haven’t been challenged yet by anyone who knows how to use a phone camera consider this your challenge. This is my day 1 of 7.

FIND. HIM. FOR. ME. After my chin heals, of course.

When you’re late for work because you had to wait in the hallway for a bathroom with a shower at the gym — which is literally the first time that’s happened in the three years you’ve belonged there — and when a room finally opens up, out walks the impossibly handsome, impossibly-maybe-he'd-insist-on-being-boyfriends-if-he-knew-how-well-I-could-tap, impossibly-OH-MY-GOD mystery stranger who’d kept totally to himself all during his workout and since your gym is unfailingly Totally Mega HeterosexualTM you don’t make eye contact because you don’t want to seem clueless and creepy but he stares right at you with a huge smile and asks you how you’re doing and you squeakily say fine and ask him how he’s doing and his smile gets even bigger and he says — and you quote, even though you don’t know why you’re still clumsily talking in the second person at this point — “I’m having a great morning NOW ...” and then he disappears as magically as he’d appeared and you go to take your shower and because you’re totally distracted from scheduling your wedding cake tasting in your head you slice nine pounds of flesh off your chin while you’re shaving and then you post a picture of your massive chin scab and the inside of your nose on your blog but you don’t care because WHAT THE HELL DID HE MEAN BY THAT?

All! Holidays! Matter!

ArtThrob: Paris Street; Rainy Day

(Original French title: Rue de Paris, temps de pluie)

1877
Gustave Caillebotte
Impressionism (1872-1892)
Art Institute of Chicago

While technically created in the heart of the Impressionist period -- which trafficked in explorations of light and color and brushstroke techniques at the expense of clear representation and plausible perspective -- Paris Street; Rainy Day reigns in Impressionism's visual indulgences with cleaner lines, realistic human figures, and vanishing-point perspective that extends almost mathematically from the rectangular cobblestones in the foreground to the ambitiously double confluences of angles at the distant ends of the forked street. To enhance the effect, Gustave Caillebotte paints the figures in gradient levels of focus, creating a photorealistic contrast between the three figures enjoying relative visual clarity in the middle distance, the three (well, two and a half) figures who are too close to stay in complete focus at the front of the painting, and the increasingly-less-defined human shapes receding into the misty distance.

While providing a convenient context for allowing distant figures to fade to gray -- along with filling the setting with shimmers of Impressionistic light and reflection -- the misty weather in the painting also allows for the curvy shapes of umbrellas and hunched people to provide visual counterpoint to the geometries of the streets and buildings ... plus it gives the figures a range of purposeful movement, whether they're casually dodging raindrops or hurrying to get somewhere dry. The overall effect is a graceful collaboration of shape, energy, atmosphere, physical presence and measured social observation.

Paris Street; Rainy Day greets visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago at the top of the Grand Staircase as they enter the permanent-collection Impressionism galleries. Its rainy ambiance may seem dour, but the choreography of human figures and the multi-directional spatial composition are an apt invitation to explore the museum, intermingle with the other patrons and contemplate even the things that aren't immediately in focus.