IMPORTANT QUESTION OF THE DAY

Bieber.  Memphis.  November 1.

DO I GO TO THIS?

Circle One:

Yes             No

(Actually, the pertinent question is whether or not I can find anyone to go with me.  I'm predicting the answer to that will be "no.")

I gave it the goodbye it deserved.

And that goodbye was one final clunky drive into Bartlett, blasting Blink-182 from the tape deck, avoiding the potholes on Bartlett Boulevard out of fear the entire rear suspension might give.

I took it home and I cleaned it up - top to bottom, inside and out - and along the way, found all sorts of memories.  A dried-up Strawberry Lip Smacker, circa 2003.  The directions to the hotel in Nashville where my college friends met up in 2006.  The Mad Libs that Kara gave me for my birthday in 2004 (that I never filled out; God love her, Kara thought Mad Libs were far funnier than I ever did).  A 2007 map of Illinois that had been rained on and was completely illegible...

And you know....try as I might, even I could not get choked up over a rained-on map and an old tube of lip balm.  Thank you, 1999 Dodge Neon with Sport Package and Rear Spoiler, for the ten years of loyal service you gave me, and especially thank you for not killing me that one time, because that would have sucked.

But you've been out of my life for all of 24 hours now and I barely even remember you anymore, so goodbye, MOVING ON.

I should find more reasons to post Fast and Furious stills.

(In comparison to the Neon, my new car - which I feel for security reasons I should maybe not describe in detail on the internet - is basically one nitrous oxide cannister and a Paul Walker cameo away from being in a mid-series Fast and Furious movie.  It's a fucking step up.)

Yay for adult decisions and surviving the (absolutely horrific) process of negotiating the price of buying a car!

IN OTHER NEWS, I will be gone all this week because I'm going to visit my brother in New York state.  I leave Tuesday, so there's your heads up as to why I'm absent from the internets (or group runs, should you be the type who is accustomed to seeing me in person).

IN THIRD NEWS, Zuckerberg got married over the weekend.  Way to fucking overshadow my car-buying experience, Zuck.  You couldn't just let me have my moment, could you?

This picture was pilfered from Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook profile.

I will never buy Facebook stock.

That's all the news from here for now.  'Till next time...

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Dark Shadows

(In seeing this movie, I have effectively proven that I will see anything - anything - that Johnny Depp is attached to.)

Half of the storyline and all of the screenplay for this one go to Seth Grahame-Smith, who famously (or infamously, whichever) wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which I haven't read) and Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter (which I have).  The latter I got for Christmas a couple of years back and have the book review saved here in draft form; I'm waiting to publish until the release of the movie of the same name.

Seth, truly, has some of the most remarkable ideas in pop culture.  But his follow through?

I felt about Dark Shadows (spoiler alert) exactly the same as I felt about Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter - Here was an absolutely fantastic premise (Johnny Depp is a vampire!  From the eighteenth century!  Who wakes up in the nineteen-seventies!  Alice Cooper cameos!) that is abysmally squandered through an utter lack of humor and an unnecessarily scattered plot.

It could have been great.  Instead, it took itself unapologetically seriously.

C+.

"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure."

I finally joined Pottermore today.  And what house was I sorted into?

Well done, Sorting Hat.  Well done.

(FeatherJinx28548 if you want to friend me, biotches.)

Uh oh. It's starting again.

All right, I need to figure out where I went wrong.  Because I was doing so well, right?

Cinco de Mayo was good.  Friday I donated to myself, and Saturday there was a party, which was more than good...

So why is it now that it's Tuesday and I feel like this?

It's like the more I find out, the less I want to know.  So many of these runners...about half, I'd say...they lie.  My God, I've never been lied to so much in my life...

And they cheat.  They harbor malicious feelings.  They're insecure, they're desperate, they're mean.  They're unrelentingly selfish, dangerously self-centered.

They're manipulative, they're unfaithful, they're obsessive, they're greedy, and they're cowards.

They are a group split almost evenly down the middle - those whose presence uplifts me and those who the mere mention of leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth for days.  And they're all thrown together - connected, intertwined, enmeshed so deeply in each other and each other's business that I can't always distinguish who is who...

My track workout this evening wasn't the best ever.  It wasn't the worst ever, either, but I was having one of those (unfortunate) nights where my body wasn't cooperating.  The best nights at track, the more I run, the stronger I feel, despite the tiredness that sets in as the workout continues.

On lesser nights (like tonight), the tiredness is accompanied only by a feeling of weakness.

Except it's an illusion.  I'm not weak.  Not physically, and certainly not mentally.  And it's not weakness to give myself reminders now and then.  That vaguely uneasy feeling hovering just below the surface is a reminder in and of itself:  I want no part of this darkness.

I'm just here to run.

The More Things Change...

I mentioned a few posts ago that this blog was something of an extension of my MySpace blog.  If you didn't believe me, see the graphic below (originally published on MySpace in 2010) that I made to describe the content of that blog.

I'm not 100% clear on the organizational scheme of the boxes in the middle of the chart, but overall, I'd say this is a fascinating affirmation that I AM THE SAME PERSON ALWAYS; LITERALLY, I HAVEN'T CHANGED AT ALL IN YEARS AND YEARS.  (Click to enlarge.)

Viva Breakaway!

Thursday night.  Cinco de Mayo Run.  6:15 p.m. from the midtown store.

I show up early to make sure I get a free T-shirt, and though I haven't dressed up, this is, technically, a costume run.  This being Breakaway, the people who have dressed up have gone all out.  Perhaps most notable is a group of Mexican wrestlers, complete with masks and tiny man-tights.  The wrestlers are made up primarily - though not exclusively - of members of what I have dubbed "the freshman class," as the guys in this group are all relatively new to running and relatively new to Breakaway.  Earlier in life, I may have accused certain of these freshmen of having repressed exhibitionist tendencies, but the older I get, the more I consider that Rhodes may have skewed my viewpoint on the "average" male, and so my updated hypothesis is that what I witness on a weekly basis is just normal behavior for boys.

Picture stolen from Ying Malady.

Our first stop is Young Avenue Deli ("Young Ave" for those cool enough to call it that...and for the record, I'm not cool enough to call it that) where I find out one of our group is leaving for bigger and better things, and then I steal a beer from a wrestler, and then I spill that beer all over me before I've even taken a drink of it, and then I have a brief conversation with two (non-wrestler) guys about Fifty Shades of Gray.  (Which none of us have read.  Or at least two of us haven't; the other - not me - refrains from commenting, so take from that what you will.)

I was told the run from Breakaway to Young Avenue Deli was "about a mile."  It's actually a mile and a half, and I wish I would have followed through on my claim as we started that I was going to run "super slow." Instead, I get caught up (as I always do) in the group momentum (dammit) and run about a minute and a half per mile faster than I meant to.  It's barely May but summer arrived weeks ago here.  The afternoon sun is warm, and the PBR tallboy that I swiped is sitting heavy as we file out the door and run one last mile to get to the Slider Inn.

Picture stolen from Patty Strain.

I've often said that there is nothing outwardly remarkable about the Slider Inn except it's within walking distance of Breakaway Running and currently the place where all of us converge on a nearly-weekly basis.  But the mere fact that we have taken ownership of it as we have is exactly the thing that does make it remarkable.  The parking lot has been roped off for us, and there are tents and tables, and even though it's the third of May and we're a bunch of sweaty, drunken American runners who are hanging out in a parking lot drinking Yuengling out of plastic cups, it is, undeniably, a damn good Cinco de Mayo party.

I finally meet my brother's friend Liz, who works there.  In fact, in the brief times I talk to her, we surpass the depth of conversation I have with many that night; despite being an introverted loner, I've been around long enough now to know too many people in the group to talk to everyone at these things.  Fireball shot at the bar.  Yes, Liz, another Yuengling.  I'm having a deep conversation about the musical merits of George Harrison, and then I'm talking to a couple of girls about their boy problems, and then I'm taking a swig of tequila from the bottle that's magically appeared on the table, and Adrian says, "Becky, I can see it.  You've really got this figured out."  Because I'm part of this, but also, on some strange level, not part of this.

When it's nine o'clock, I'm able to resist the temptation of another drink and instead stand up and say my goodbyes.  Predictably, I'm accosted by a couple of wrestlers as I try to make my exit.  ("Oh, GOD!" I yell, and genuinely, because of their tiny man-tights.)  I walk back to Breakaway alone, go home alone, and wake up happy both that I have this in my life, and that I can step outside of it when I need to.

Cinco de Mayo.  How did I ever celebrate before I started to run?

And then there were two.

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard have again procreated.  Those of you who have read my book know that the birth of their first child in 2006 was a milestone in my life because…

…well, it’s complicated (read the book!), but basically because Stephen Gyllenhaal wound up chewing me out over US Weekly reading Just Jared and then I became disillusioned with Hollywood.  Or something.

Taking a drastically different approach for round 2, not only did Maggie and Peter keep her pregnancy under wraps for as long as possible this time, and then keep mum on the due date, they didn’t even tell anybody when they actually had the kid.  Gloria Ray arrived two Thursdays ago (!). 

The news just hit the internet yesterday, and HILARIOUSLY, US Weekly (obviously still stinging from the fact that I scooped them five and a half years ago), is announcing this story as an “exclusive."

(Equally hilarious is Just Jared's careful crediting of US Weekly.  Lessons learned all the way around, then, eh?)

And all of this is to say that the more I think about this, the more I would like to inflate my own sense of self-importance and take FULL CREDIT for Maggie and Peter having their second kid in secret, because, after all, it wasn't until I screwed it up for them the first time around that they thought to go the stealth route.  (I will also take credit for US Weekly freaking out over announcing it, and for Just Jared sucking up to them over it, because it'd be stupid of me not to.) 

The shadows of Babygate still darken the internet landscape.

Sometimes I think that I am a lost voice in the cacophony of modernity…but maybe, in reality, my power knows no bounds…