Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 110

Old Man Skivork Presents: Country Death happening Saturday yes join us please won't you awesome thank you.

Daddy Cool (as modeled by contributor Myles Tanzer) is in the house.

Flashback. Tribute. Remembrance. Something. This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Nine - Gigantic and Massive, starring the J.A. Tyler.

With so much love, sadness, and appreciation flowing towards the J.A. Tyler and now defunct Mud Luscious Press, we thought we would re-run This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Nine - Gigantic and Massive, where we had the chance to talk to the J.A. Tyler before Mud Luscious Press was quite what it became, and J.A. became the J.A. Tyler we all know and love, gigantic and massive. Enjoy. And share. It just might change your life.

Please don't suck.

This Book Will Change Will Change Your Life - Overthinking the Marathon by Ray Charbonneau.

One thought we had while thinking about this post was how to not overthink Overthinking the Marathon by Ray Charbonneau, which may or may not be a marathon training guide, though it is, sort of, but is definitely an exploration of the compulsive behavior that both drives runners like Ray Charbonneau, and allows them to be the kind of runners they want to be. Charbonneau needs to run, often, and far, but to accomplish this he needs to understand how that will work, when to run, how far, where, which shoes are best, whether cross-training on a bike supports or inhibits his ability to stay healthy and run fast, or at least fast for a guy his age and weight and skill. Because that is part of the compulsion as well, worrying about everything under the sun that may or may not affect the run. Now whether fun is actually being had is another subtext to this book. Isn't it supposed to be fun? It is. But can you have fun when you're worrying about things like weight and shaving off callouses, asking yourself why you feel slow or your neck hurts, and wondering if acupuncture is real? There are also our compulsions of course, the need to run, and write, a lot, but to read as well, and read about runners. And then there is, was, the compulsion to finish this book, this week. A book that we had otherwise been taking our time with, and allowing the compulsion to wash over us in waves, but now feeling compelled to finish in the wake of the past week's bombings at the Boston Marathon. As if doing so, would somehow allow us to commune with the grandest of all races. A race which just so happens to happen in a place where we just ran last month with the Charbonneau himself, as we recorded an episode of This Podcast Will Change Your Life, while on the run, discussing compulsion, running, and having fun. Because training and worrying may not be fun, but the act of running, talking it, making connections, and experiencing the new, is a wonderful thing, even in the face of bombers who want to instill fear and isolation at all and any costs. Something we very much did not want to overthink as we wrote this. Running is not magic, and it is not an antidote to any of that. But as Charbonneau so ably shows, the act of wanting something, anything, so greatly, can still change your life in ways both healthy and awesome, and these are good things to remember during an otherwise horrific week where Charbonneau and many others finished the Boston Marathon and were allowed to get on with their lives, even as so many others were not.    

"I've been the oldest child since before you were born." E.L. Konigsburg (1930-2013)

Happy Birthday.

"Only the weak succumb to brutality." Superman

We Are Hosho McCreesh. We are also "The Vanessa Hudgens Diaries" and The Way We Sleep at The Book Cellar.

And for more on The Way We Sleep and the way we read when we read "The Vanessa Hudgens Diaries" from The Way We Sleep in our "I Am Hosho McCreesh" T-shirt, do check-out the Liz Baudler's account at Chicago Literati. It just may change your life.

New joint. Believe. At the Knee-Jerk.

More truth. Also appreciations to the Casey Bye and the whole Knee-Jerk for running with this. Please do enjoy, or something. And how about some excerpt, maybe? Goodness.

"Of course, it’s more than that, because I am you. I just happen to be the better you, the fearless you, the you who doesn’t have to follow rules or listen to bosses, because unlike you, I make the rules and I am the boss.

And you want this for you, but you can’t have it, and you won’t have it, because you don’t visualize it as real or possible."

New joint. The Collaborators: The Mad Men Guide to Raising Children. At The Good Men Project.

Truth. Mad Men, The Simpsons, LOST, children, The Good Men Project, all of it.  And big thanks to the Joanna Schroeder for that. Excerpt? Coolness.   

“I don’t think about it.”
 
This is Don Draper’s approach to affairs and spouses, possible dinner dates with both, and in this case with the smart girl from Freaks and Geeks, and later ER. It’s not an admirable trait, not exactly, and I suppose it implies he’s dead inside, possibly sociopathic. Though it also reflects what happens when you grow up in a whore house and watch your pregnant step-mother have sex with your “uncle,” the head rooster, through a keyhole while wearing a very bad pageboy haircut.

This also applies however, to thoughts of childhood Leukemia, school shootings, deadly porch parties, mental illness, bullying, and child sexual abuse among other things I just cannot bear to think about when it comes to parenting, which just may be the absolute worst job in the world. Because if I were to think about things, well . . .what then? I wouldn’t get out of bed that’s what.