A chance read; a clear, life-changing event

It started with a conversation.

We were discussing books, which we tended to do (media, after all, for journalists, is an opinionated safe house). It was January and someone was reading Freedom, the latest Jonathan Franzen tomb that topped most of the years best books list. To be honest, if you were going to read Freedom, it was already getting too late in the year to do so.

I wasn't going to read Freedom. I was feeling pretty good about this decision. It was counter. I'm not usually a counter kind of a person. I didn't enjoy The Corrections. It was too awkward for me. In fact I had to stop half way through. And I never stop reading books (three-quarters of a way through Anna Karenina my free time was spent "hate reading").

A friend mentioned Franzen's book of essay called How To Be Alone.

"I like Freedom," she said. "But I loved How to Be Alone."

Less awkward, more thought provoking, was the idea.

I had it on my list of books I wanted to read. It was a growing list. Also, by now, it was a month after this Franzen conversation and my memory of it already fading. It's Saturday and we walk past the book-crowded corner on which The Strand stands and I say lets go in.

What are you after, asks R.

This book a friend recommended, How to Be Alone... by David Foster Wallace.

It had been a while and many media-related conversations. So, yes, I had an authorial morph and assumed another, unread, high profile writer.

We pass on The Strand. It's crowded and sweat-inducing and there are street cupcakes to be had.

It's Sunday and R and I are out and about in Brooklyn. We hit up a flea market and were feeling less inspired and more dirty by its collection of other peoples junk, but a week-end malaise takes us to their second floor.

A pile of books welcomes us to the stairwell and I happens to look through it. And what do I find? How To Be Alone. By none other than Jonathan Franzen (a fact quickly remembered).

It was mine for $2.18.

Had I followed The Strand/David Foster Wallace path How To Be Alone may not have been mine. But it is. And somehow this feels important. And... not to put a lot into it, but, this collection of essays is likely to change my life.

It's only right.

The first essay sets Franzen in his apartment on Valentines Day (Valentines Day is tomorrow, ah hem).

He's talking about memory, specifically his father's Alzheimer's, but also how memories tend to be a collection, not just one specific event. For example, he writes

I retain general, largely categorical memories of the past (a year spent in Spain; various visits to Indian restaurants on East Sixth Street)...

True, I have no year in Spain, but I DO have (countless) visits to Indian restaurants on East Sixth Street as my own memories.

See? This book, Mr. Franzen, me: It's destiny. Yes, BYOB Indian restaurants proves that. And just to solidify the bond, I pause, think about one of those restaurant memories, and further ingrain it in my memory.

And then this happened

Almost.



Ok.

That.



Hello, you.

You see... I was fittin' to post about all the cultural activities R & I got up to over the MLK weekend (some music, a bit of art, a view,a jaunt through a museum), which was all very fun and interesting. And then a week passed and it became Sunday. And I decided to make a roasted pear upside down cake.

Bold move.

I was snooping around on Food Gawker (hours wasted), my sweet/hangover tooth aching for something. There were the classic chocolate goodies (my go-to) but somehow this completely out of the blue pear cake just spoke to me.

I might have helped that we had three more-than-ripe pears begging to be consumed. R kindly jumped out into the cold (nothing can motivate a Sunday person like a home baked dessert) to get the provisions (who has corn meal on hand, anyhow?). And off I went.

There was one misfire when I found I needed baking soda AND powder (damn you two leavening agents!) but it turns out if you use three times the amount of powder for the amount required of soda, you're good to go.

Honestly, it may look impressive (you're not allowed to say otherwise) but this was one of the easiest desserts I have ever made.

AND. It. Was. Delicious. It had that salty-sweet thing going for it and the cornmeal gave it a fantastic grainy texture. It was light but moist and the bottom layer adds the kick of sweetness (a layer of sugar butter. That's right. Sugar. Butter.). The pears roast down to a delectable softness that melts in your mouth and then the rosemary offers this hint of savory flavor. Awesome.

And THEN just to top it off. I made this genius asparagus, goat cheese and lemon pasta from Smitten Kitchen.



I swapped regular pasta for the curly cute kind (because it's all that I had) and I swapped rosemary for tarragon for the same reason. The rosemary worked out fine, though I'm sure tarragon would have been EVEn better. It was creamy with that goat cheese bite. We wolfed it down. And it really only took 20 minutes. Amaze, amaze.

So, there it is. Back on the cooking wagon (not that I really strayed).

Next time, the cultural adventures... I swear.

A day that will live in Bellamy

While snooping around yesterday for interesting stories I noticed a curious, shall we say, epidemic, possibly global, infecting men by the name of

Bellamy.

Yes.

When was the last time you heard that name? I think I know of a comic by that name, so it rings light-hearted and happy to me. But it turns out, Bellamys have a dark side.

Particularly on 1.12.11

Here's the latest on this late-breaking conspiracy:

The brothers Bellamy.

Who, might you ask, are the Bellamy brothers and, what, pray tell, do they have to do with Britney Spears? In no other world, besides, possibly porn, would two aging mustachioed country-pop kin and one struggling pop princess be connected. And yet here we are.

Ms. Spears debuted her new pop dance floor single, "Hold it against me," on Monday, after years of meltdowns and scandal. Surprisingly, despite her helium-soaked vocals, the tune was mildly heralded and quickly became the no. 1 download on iTunes.

The pop princess returns!

Nay! Say the Brothers Bellamy. In honor of the 35th anniversary of their "massive debut pop hit" "Let Your Love Flow," the Bellamy Brothers are reentering society in scandalous form. "Hold it against me" is OURS, the brothers proclaim. Those four seemingly innocuous words are country pop gold when strung together and preceded by the pick-up line, "If I said you had a beautiful body..."

Did Britney rip off the country crooners? Or do the two pop groups just have the same taste in common lyrics? The debate continues.

Baby Bellamy.

Who the hell is Matt Bellamy?

He might be in a band, but more importantly he is giving Kate Hudson's baby Ryder a sibling!

The couple have been reportedly dating for nine months and word on the street is that said baby Bellamy was not planned but the couple is "embracing it."

Cue exclamation points!!!

Don't famous people have birth control? I mean, I know my monthly BC takes a hit out of my already empty wallet, but somehow I don't see Kate suffering from the same affliction.

Well to each his own.

And now we can all thank our lucky stars that Matt Bellamy has entered our world. We definitely needed another pasty emo rocker with sculpted hair. Yipee Skip.

Manchester Bellamy.

And in the third, and what could make this a global, Bellamy phenomenon I bring you Craig Bellamy.

Again, who?

He is a soccer player with a bit of a temper, it would seem. Not that that is a surprise. But the reason he appeared in my news feed at all, it seems, is that he's, like, Beckham famous, so...

Here's the breakdown: former Wales captain Craig Bellamy got into a brawl with two other men (man babies - merely 20 and 26 years of age) and some peeps may have walked away with bloody faces.

The clincher is that the fight came HOURS after Bellamy's team and another team tied 1-1 in the FA Cup third round.

GASP!

And that's all the energy I can muster to care about that.

BUT I think we can all admit that the coincidence is a weird one. Just be thankful your last name isn't Bellamy. And if it is, well, stay out of trouble.

Slow cooking the shit out of 2011

It was a culinary kind of Christmas.

Santa brought not one but TWO slow cookers. Something, or someone, was trying to tell me something:

I want meat, and I want it tender.

And so we began 2011 with a three pound cut of beef chuck roast, Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook and a programmable Cuisinart slow cooker.

If you are to enter into the slow cooker way of life there are a few things you should take into consideration:

1) Do not begin your maiden meal at noon on a Sunday
2) Best to do your grocery shopping the day before so that everything is ready to go
3) For God's sake, take the contraption out from it's comfortable Styrofoam nestle of a box

Since we like to live dangerously, we opened our precious piece of meat half past 1 in the afternoon for what was quickly becoming a late night pot roast snack.

But it was hard to stop. I mean look at that thing. It begged to be slow-cooked.



We chopped a few veggies, braised the beast in the new All-Clad pan, simmered a little dry - or available - wine from our Box 'O and plopped the whole thing in the slow cooker -- setting it to a generous eight hour timer.





And away we went.

We were giddy with the idea of all that flavor and tenderness working away without us. We had hired out, or out-right stole, Cinderellas little bird and mice friends for an afternoon of free cooking labor while we hit the town. It seemed scandalous.

Four hours later we were starving and had exhausted our neighborhood activities.

We returned to our meat-smelling abode with stomachs growling and patience waning.

We watched a movie, flipped through old issues of US Weekly and, being desperate for the passage of time, tidied.

It was brutal.

We ate a salad appertif in ten minutes that was meant to kill two hours.

I began boiling water for the egg noodles with 90 minutes to go. Within 30 minutes we were slicing up that tender puppy, weak in the knees, not caring a lick to wait any longer.

I threw some flour in the cooker and jimmied together some gravy. I piled egg noodles, the falling-apart meat and the soupy gravy high in a bowl and we just stood and stared at our non-work.



Sure it was 10 p.m. but... It. Was. Glorious.

Somehow in all the commotion of those first cooking moments I neglected to pour salt and pepper on the mound of meat (Me! Forgetting salt!) so it did lack a little depth of flavor, but the tenderness made us quickly forget any such negligence.

It was indulgent and delicious and, I can say from experience, even better the next day.

Of course three pounds of chuck roast is WAY more than a couple needs, but it did get us three meals worth and its more meat than we would have normally eaten in six months.

Oh, glorious, slow cooker, I can tell we are going to have a very happy and caloric life together.

What to do when you're not running

I'm still out of running commission.

Since the marathon I have gone, somewhat diligently, to the gym, but all those machines get painfully boring.

I bop from the stationary bike to the elliptical and to some thing that makes me prance in place like a gazelle with inappropriately different length legs. I attempt to know what I'm doing with some weights, I manage some sit ups, but in the end I am BEYOND bored. I mean, it's painful.

And then I found boxing.

It's a class at the gym that I assumed was a set-to-music version of tae-bo from my VHS days. But OH no.

This is Rocky in non-contact form.

The teacher, a former boxer, is our drill sergeant and we his running, jumping, hitting peons. The first class was utterly terrifying. I have been to my fair share of gym classes, sampling a variety of classic-type teachers -- the self loathing passive aggressive, the disgustingly bubbly babbler, the plain old hard ass -- but none that use a healthy dose of yelling, deafening music and a fog horn (yup).

I was a few minutes late and boxer teacher gave me a piercing look and then pointed to the ground where I was meant to join a snake formation of students doing the "bear crawl" round and round the small, dark studio. The group was, and continues to be, mostly women and a few heavily tattooed men. After crawling and running and sufficiently breaking a sweat I gingerly pull on some slightly damp gloves and take to a punching bag that a middle aged woman, sporting eyeliner and pink gloves, is already pushing around.

Others in the class share the bags scattered around the room and begin punching the shit out of them -- literally pieces of cloth spew from the hole at the top. Meanwhile me and pink gloves are paddling our bag back and forth like a fat toddler swinging on a Sunday afternoon.

Ultimately our punching bag stints turn into 2 minute drills where we move around the studio -- doing exercises in between punching like crab walks, weighted sit ups and push ups with a hand clap in the middle, something I thought only military recruits were forced to do in muddy waters in the rain.

The 20-or-so of us make it around the studio doing the variety show of drills until we each get a turn with boxer teacher. Even from a far this look terrifying. Not knowing how to throw, land or take a punch if my life depended on it, I was shaking in my gloves, wondering if I can take the push-up-hand-clap torture over a physical tete-a-tete with this Rocky remake. Pink gloves goes first and by the end of her two minutes her eyeliner has given her proper black eyes and her breathing is moving into heart attack territory, but she's smiling. There's hope.

I go next. It's not like he's hitting us, but, rather, we are hitting him -- his upper body, even, and pads that he wears on his hands. During the first bit he instructs me how to stand and to stop Stevie Wonder-ing with my head.

After a few tries I get into a rhythm that has me feeling every part of my body (though, especially my knuckles). As we move into a jumping, hitting routine he starts to get into it.

"Hit ME" he yells, I respond with a wind up that just misses his shoulder.

"Hit me like a GIRL" he screams through gridded teeth. Is that good? Bad? I thought I DID hit him like a girl.

I throw a punch and land it. I smile for a moment, he doesn't, I get back to the task.

Soon enough the rest of the class is joining in on the calls - "Hit him!" they scream "Keep at it!" Bolstered my the sudden team-like setting I do a rapid fire round where

I'm twisting and turning and my sweat-soaked hair is whipping my neck (I never did get the hang of keeping my head straight) and boxer teacher is pushing me and I'm pushing him back and he just reeks of man sweat and I'm wondering how long it has been since I've washed my gym clothes and he yells at me to do upper cuts and the sound of my glove hitting his pad starts to echo around the room and I think my hands must be bleeding already and my stomach can't take another twist and all of a sudden it's done.

And my heavy breath mixes with some sweat and I am slapping everybody's gloves as a "job well done" and I look at myself in the mirror and I look crazed and slightly like a beast and it feels damn good.

And all before 8 a.m.

Best work out ever.

Next up: how to keep your breakfast down during 90 minutes of hot and sweaty yoga.

Twin Peaks series finale, really?

Is what I wrote into my Google search button.

I mean, what the hell, David Lynch?!

I realize I'm a decade too late but is Twin Peaks the Best Show Ever with the most open-ended series ending in HISTORY?!



Five years ago I started this journey with R in his Carroll Gardens apartment. We would watch one episode whenever I slept over there and it was mind blowing. For one, HOW was this show on prime time television?

There's rape, murder, spousal abuse, schizophrenia and good old fashioned money-motivated deviant behavior (not to mention a lady who talks to a log).

Slowly but surely we made our way through. I found comfort in Special Agent Dale Cooper, Norma and Ed, and the small pleasures of a damn good cup of Joe.

But we stopped after we found out who killed Laura Palmer. There were some rumors on R's end that the second season wasn't as good and I was creeped out enough to take a break.

Five years later I find myself with an empty apartment, a computer and the full season of Twin Peaks. Having no idea where I actually dropped off, I popped in a disk and let the story unfold again.

And, yes, the Laura Palmer storyline is the clincher. But there's clearly something else going on in this funny Alaskan town and I was instantly hooked on the whole weirdo clan.

And things were going well. With Special Agent Dale Cooper's leadership we were able to find out who killed Laura Palmer (yes, again. I backtracked). And found spice and stories of long-lost love in our favorite FBI agent's past when a former partner comes to the once-sleepy town to terrorize via chess game.

Slowly but surely "Coop" gets incorporated into the town -- is stripped of his FBI suit-fatigues and even meets and girl.

I creep toward the end of the special edition set. R returns to our new humble abode and I pop in the second to last disk. Each of the three episodes is stranger than the last but we take comfort in that one last disk sitting in it's case, reeking of answers and closure.

We get to the third episode, pop it in haphazardly on a Friday night. It's weirder than most, steering the plot into the other-worldly, mysterious part of the show that lives in red velvet drapes and characters back from the dead.

But we swallow it, putting our trust in Mr. Lynch.

Audrey and Pete go into a bank and don't come out and Coop kind of comes out of the velvet-draped dream land but we're not entirely sure and then the creepy spirit appears in the mirror and Coop is bleeding from the head and talking funny and the credits come and we're all, what the what?

Thank GOD there are more episodes.

Except there aren't.

There weren't.

The next day we take a break from unpacking and pop in the last disk ever so carefully and flick through a menu of... extras?

The realization came slow.

Wait, that was the... end?

We go back to the last disk. Fast forward a couple of scenes, see if we missed anything.

Same Dale, same mirror, same bloody head, same creepy spirit.

Same ending credits.

I search the blogs.

What was that ABOUT, I ask?

But there are no answers. Only speculation many years too late.

It had to be this way, they said.

But it's not fair.

Cooooooooop!

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!

Enough with the dramatics. But it was weird, right? Has anyone seen it lately? If not, I implore you to check it out again. Seriously, how was this show on prime time? And how did the TV-viewing public allow Lynch to get away with a series ender so full of cliff hangers? If only I had been there, old enough, to watch it. Mr. Lynch would have heard from ME -- in frantically written letters sent on torn out sheets of school book paper penned in different colored ink. He would have read my wrath. But now, I'm too late. And I'll never have Special Agent Dale Cooper back. (sigh) I even tried watching the 1991 SNL episode where Kyle McLaughlin hosts. It wasn't the same.

I'm even renting the weirdo movie that acts as a precursor to the series because one blog wrote there were some allusions to what happened at the end. I'll take anything I can get.

xoL

Birthing the marathon

Running a marathon is, I've decided, a lot like giving birth.

True, I have yet to have an actual baby. But considering the anticipation of said event and the physicality that comes along with it, I'm going to go ahead and say the comparison is not a stretch.

Thus, my marathon birth story.

*Spoiler alert* I won.



How amazing is this guy? Yup. Running buddy.

Alright, so I didn't quite win it. But I finished. I think my time was 4:37 minutes - give or take.

But let's back up.

I was talked into running this puppy by my friend who has run three other marathons. I love Chicago, I love this friend and I've always wanted to try so sign up we did.

You may recall my trials and tribulations with training. It worked out well, in the end as I was unemployed and could contribute larger chunks of my week to hitting the open road. Then I got injured. Then I recovered. Then I got a job and training got pushed to the back burner but I managed to clock in 18 miles the week before so away I went.

Friend and I had a hotel right by the starting line and after a lovely day of distractions with Chicago friends and a hearty meal with my family who flew in for the even, we made our way up to our room for a short nights rest.

Up at 5:45, we dedicated an hour to stretching and preparations and made it down to the starting line just as they were blocking off some entrances. We squeezed into the 10 minute mile slot along with a couple thousand other people and...walked a crowded slow distance up to the start.

It started off great, as I'm sure these all do. It was a beautiful, if super toasty, day and the crowd was already thick and excited at the 7:30 start. We meandered through the crowd of runners in the loop and made our way up to the lakeside and into my old neighborhoods Lincoln Park and Lakeview. We even passed my old street (twice)!

Lakeview was definitely the most rocking of the neighborhoods, what with Boystown to support the runners in the Trannies-in-costume-dancing-to-Lady-Gaga category.

Friend and I ran side-by-side until about the halfway point. She was having some knee problems and we gradually drifted apart (sniff) until I couldn't see her anymore.

Then I saw my parents. It was somewhere between miles 13 and 14 and my dad popped out of the crowd and ran with me for a moment offering me sips of water and dates. Brilliant. It was also a lovely distraction. He told me they would be around miles 17 and 20, so it was always something to keep me going.

Turning west I tried to keep an eye out for Chicago friends who I knew would be hanging around the Diversey/Greektown area or thereabouts but, sadly, I never saw them. The crowd thinned in parts in the western neighborhoods but there were always people around and I was never not running in a crowd.

Around mile 16 I started to get a pain in my knee - a familiar one, that annoying IT band strain. But it was early and every so often it would go away so I just ran on.

Just as he promised, I saw my dad around 18 and then somewhere in the early 20s when things were starting to go downhill. At this point I was just running through the knee pain but it kind of provided a distraction from the regular old body pain that was starting to present itself with little bursts. I tried to keep up the eating but it seemed the last thing I wanted to do.

The latter part of the course weaves itself around the south side. Whenever I thought we were starting to run back north we'd take another turn and head south again. But it wasn't bad. Ignorance was bliss as I had absolutely no idea what was up ahead.

Between miles 20 and 23 I had this flash of optimism. I was getting down to a handful of miles and the crowd was getting thicker and more supportive. I even braved a sip of beer around 23. I had my ipod sitting with an hour long mix for motivation back up and somewhere around this time period I turned it on. I totally misjudged the type of music I would be up for. Some advice: less 80s and 90s ballads and more Beyonce. I think it was around 22 that 'Halo' came on and I literally got chills as I rounded a corner and saw the loop in the distance. The mix took a dive from there but it was a really nice 2 minutes.

And then 24 hit and there seemed absolutely no possible way that I could run two more miles. Like, none. The crowd was awesome but downtown Chicago just did not seem to get any closer. I was to the point of hobbling with my knee. Actually, when I ran it was better but whenever I stopped for water a shooting pain ran up my left leg.

Also at this point I had no idea how slow I was going. How long was 2 miles? 20 minutes? Please kill me, 40 minutes?

Then I started to see it. The crowd was a mass of color ahead of me. The mileage markers started to count down in kilometers, which helped me gauge the distance not at all. You had to turn right, run up a slight hill and then take a left and head in to the final mini stretch. People were screaming, just yelling their heads off for every runner trying to make it up that mini mountain. At one point I look over and this woman who had already lost her voice yelled, 'You're my hero, I could never do this.' And that got me over the hill.

When I rounded the corner and the giant red finish line was clearly in front of me I started to laugh cry and, I think, said 'oh my god' a few times until I got looks from nearby runners. But, I'm sorry, are you really going to finish this thing in silence?

I crossed the finish line with arms raised, like friend told me too, and totally and completely wept. Man it felt good.

Then it felt terrible and then I was given water and cookies and bananas and bagels and a cape of some sort and told to grin in front of a camera (I can only imagine out framable that one was) and wander TWO miles down to where family and friends would be reunited. That walk must have taken as long as the marathon. I was dazed and limping and feeling slightly ill just trying to retain a tight grip on all the goodies I was shoveled.

Finally, at the designated meet-up spot, I saw my Mom and brother and have never been so excited. They hugged me, sweaty and all, and it was the best moment.



My Dad, who was trying to find me up by the finish line, returned and we compared stories. A little while later, from out of the crowd like a sweaty little angel, appeared friend! She finished despite running on a bum knee for the entire second half of the marathon. I limped up to her and we hugged and both cried and it was hilariously emotional and awesome. We treated ourselves to free massages, very slow showers, a clean change of clothes and a panini and french fries afterward.

It was a crazy experience and I was surprised by the emotions and all I kept thinking is, why would anyone ever want to do this again?

And yet, as the days passed and my aches and pains faded it was really just the anticipation and excitement and shared experience that remained. I tried running the other day and got 10 minutes into a job before my IT band acted up. So it's going to be a longer recovery, but I'm OK with that. I did what I had to do. I finished/won and have my life back now that training isn't a top priority. But with the New York marathon happening this weekend it's hard not to think if maybe that's a possibility sometime in the future.

A long way in the future.

Happy running.

xoL