Chicago Marathon

I wanted to mention the Chicago Marathon on my blog because I always find it to be an experience that showcases the best things about our city and its people.

I woke up early Sunday morning, well earlier than I would have liked, after a night which was best summed up by my first beverage of the evening entitled "The Behemoth."  Needless to say, I was... tired.  I, slowly, made my way out of my apartment and down to Taylor street where the faster runners were just passing by.  As I made my way down the block toward our neighborhood Starbucks for a nice, warm latte the flow of runners began to increase in density.  I walked passed the water stop where high school cross country runners, their coaches and parents, and some committed members of the running community were busy bracing for the swarm of thirsty bodies that were bearing down on the Taylor Street oasis.  I made it to Starbucks and, still not quite awake, stumbled awkwardly over my order, "medium, uhh grande? is it?, latte... ohh and uhhh no foam...please."  I think that sentence took a good 45 seconds to choke out, at which time the, very patient, woman taking my order replied, "Grande latte, no foam?"  I was able to get my act together enough to shut my mouth and start nodding my head.  Due to the forty nine or so people working at Starbucks that day, I had my order in less time than it took me to place it.

Feeling slightly more awake after a few sips from my delicious latte, I stepped outside to see the four hour pacers running by.  The sea of runners thickened a great deal since I entered the coffee shop and so had the crowds on the streets.  I picked a spot just behind the bike lane line and next to a stroller, knowing that it would be something not likely to be moved and that I could see over.  What I heard for the next hour or so was what makes me enjoy watching the marathon so much.

Nothing but smiles lined Taylor Street to greet the runners as they passed by the crowded side walks.  Several people run the marathon with their names written on their clothes, and people along the way shout out their name and yell for them to keep going and that they are doing well.  These are people who have never seen each other before and are unconditionally in support of each other on this one day of the year.

When Christmas time comes along we talk about "good will toward men," but the time of the year when this phrase is truly upheld is out in the streets during the marathon.  So inspiring was the feeling among the runners and the crowds egging them on that every time I stand by them, I feel like joining them, sometimes I even think that it might be a good idea to train and run next year, even though I really have no interest in running a marathon.  

When I was out there I heard my mother's voice in my head when I began to think "there is such a positive feeling in the air right now."  I had to laugh at myself because the voice in my head that was speaking the thoughts I, myself, was having, was more of a version of my brother's impression of my mom's voice than her voice itself.  After I had my own personal chuckle that I think I was able to hide behind the vail of my sunglasses and the smile I already had plastered on my face, I got back to watching the runners as they shuffled by along the street.

Besides the feeling of positive energy exuding from the crowd, my other favorite part of the marathon is watching all the beautiful bodies as they do what they have been training to do for the last several months, run (well sometimes shuffle, walk, stumble, and I know I saw a woman doing something that best resembled trying to walk with flippers on).  But seriously, it's not often that one stumbles to Starbucks in the morning and is greeted by tens of thousands of happy and, for the most part, good looking people parading down the street, not to mention a hearty dose of good vibs!

This week is turning out to be one best described by the old saying "it's time to put your money where your mouth is."  It seems like it happened all at once.  Mom called and informed me that, in the mail I received my acceptance letter from NIU to enroll as a Student at Large (which by the way is nothing to celebrate because it just means that I can now begin paying them money to take classes toward a degree I will have to apply and be accepted to later), my book of 501 Spanish verbs, and my GRE test prep book, and my own copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I have still not finished.  On top of this I have finally received phone calls back from two schools that I have been trying to get in touch with for recruiting purposes for over a week now.  It seems the magic number of phone calls, with messages, to get a response is twelve, plus one unannounced visit in person.  More importantly, however, the most promising of them is UIC College Prep, a Noble Street Charter school affiliated with, you guessed it, UIC and focused on health sciences.  So what this all means is that I have some real work to do in the next few weeks if I am going to hold to my goals I stated in an earlier post.  

As a post script, I ordered all those books from thriftbooks.com and paid just under fifteen bucks with shipping.  They are used, but it's a pretty sweet deal as I found a ton of books for, literally, one penny.  Check it out.

"i've had a little too much to think tonight"

"Boom boom boom boom, gonna shoot ya right down!"

John Lee Hooker's jamming softly in the background  tonight.

I've been feeling pretty even lately, almost what one might call zen.  Not that I'm claiming any new wisdom or anything, just been feeling very relaxed and even.  Today I awoke without an alarm at 7:15 or so, something I've failed to do even with the assistance of my phone alarm for several days now.  But when I work nights and stay up late "decompressing" (watching crap late night tv) after work, I guess that's just what I get.  Today, however, I accomplished my goals for the day and then some, which is certainly motivating.  None of this is either here nor there though, the real reason for this entry is some things I was pondering during an

d after my evening at a free screening of the new movie with Michael Cera, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist."

This guy Michael Cera got his start, to my limited knowledge, in the Fox show "Arrested Development," and has, since then, starred in feature the feature films "Superbad" and "Juno."  He's one of those guys that people kind of like to say, "oh I of knew him when..."  or at least his last two movies, Juno and Nick and Norah..., have that kind of Indie vibe to them.  This whole "Indie" kick I'm ranting on could just be stemming from the Indie/semi-original soundtracks that accent these films.  Or it could be that Nick and Norah... is based on a night out in NYC that revolves around a bunch of, very quirky, high school kids' ill fated search for the unknown venue in which their favorite band, which most of them brag about knowing of before anyone else, is playing a show.  The gimmick is that this band announces on the radio that they are playing, but won't release the location of their performance publicly, you have to find out through a series of vague clues.  Reminds me of a song that I heard on Pandora while closing up at Lush- I promised myself I'd remember this song's name and artist and, of course have forgotten- about a band that was so grunge that they refused to play their songs, and became so popular that they were invited to come and not perform their songs at the grammys, but were eventually beat out by a band that wasn't even together.  Side note (thanks Marincic) this song was written in the Folk style.  Anyway, we now arrive at my point.

What is it that makes people dislike music once it gets "too popular" or "mainstrea

m"?  Or any kind of public media for that matter.  What made me think of this was while the credits of the movie were scribbled over the opening scene of the movie to the tune of some Shins-esque song, in the Juno-style crayon font, I thought to myself, how long until Michael Cera becomes his own genre?  Or, thinking of my classifying the font of the credits as Juno-esque, has he done it already?  How long until people stop bragging about knowing him when... while commending his ability to play that geeky, yet smartass-ie, nervous high school kid, and start sighing about how he always plays this geeky, yet smartass-ie, nervous high school kid?

Indie bands, well anything "Indie," have/has a shelf life.  You're only cool or interesti

ng until people actually find out about you, and then your, uhhh so mainstream and you, uhhh, a

lways sound, act, look, the same.  Which is funny because it seems like a person's taste, good or bad, is then removed from the equation.  However, every person that is guilty of turning up his or her nose at some band whose "first album was great, but after that their sound was so mainstream," has a guilty pleasure.  I would know, mine is Christina Aguilera, yeah she's pretty skanky, and has a tendency to over-sing everything, but I'm a sucker for girls who can sing low, and man she has got some serious pipes.

So here's the interactive part of blogging, I want to hear everyone's guilty pleasure artist.  I mean you don't have to if you're... chicken, but if you've got the balls, or ovaries, to step to the plate and admit it to me (and the world because I'm totally going to to tell the whole school) add it to the

comments section.

As for me, I guess I've kind of been avoiding the whole topic altogether and listening to the Blues non stop.  The Black Keys (oops kinda Indie) when I'm working out, John Lee Hooker when I'm drinking wine, Freddie King or Buddy Guy when I'm looking to rock out and of course a whole lot of live Otis Redding and Sam Cooke at any time at all.

"Pumpin' Up, Pumpin' Iron"

Something that has sort of slipped through the cracks of pop culture in the last decade, mostly for good reason, is the "sport" of body building.  Saturday night changed all that for me in one, ninety minute, tidal wave of borderline homoeroticism and polyester.  If you have never been lucky enough to experience the testosterone fest that is the 1970's documentary "Pumping Iron" well, I pity you, I really do.  Fear not, you poor, huddled masses, there is hope.  Netflix carries the dvd, or for you who, like me, could not wait, youtube has the film broken into nine or so parts.  For part one click here.

Before you begin your adventure into the land of body oil, bulging pecs, and fathers living vicariously through their sons (Lou Farrigno's dad), there are a few steps to take in preparation.  First, purchase a bottle of Bourbon, I recommend, from experience, the George T. Stagg from Buffalo Trace Distillery.  At just over 70% alcohol by volume, it has just enough kick to stand up to 27 year old Arnold Schwarzenegger's chiseled back.  The whiskey will put you in the appropriate state of mind (which is best described by the theme song to Matt Stone and Trey Parker's film "Orgazmo" entitled "Now You're a Man")  Once you have the proper potent potables, watch this sketch from Mad Tv.  I know what you're thinking, Mad Tv sucks, and for the most part, I agree, but there are a few things they do very well including Opera and Arnold.  Well done, now you have a good idea of Schwarzenegger in parody and you're ready to compare that with the real man.

Keep in mind that this documentary is not a joke, intentionally.  The interviews are serious, the responses are serious, the cockiness is serious, the tears are serious, the shower scene is serious!

During the course of the film you will learn that Arnold has been Mr. Olympia for the last six years and is going for number seven.  The competition this year is tough, including future Hulk Lou Ferrigno and Arnold's best friend Franco Columbo, who is shown picking up and moving a car out of a tight parking spot in his home town in Italy.  In spite of the very worthy and well prepared competition Schwarzenegger shows no sign of ever questioning himself throughout the entire film.  The filmmakers do a fantastic job of bringing his inflated ego to the forefront by cutting from clips of Ferrigno grunting and training in a basement gym in Brooklyn to Arnold on the beach in California or at a photo shoot with bikini-clad go-go dancer-looking girls groping him and giggling.  Brilliant.

Something else to note is that this movie is shot in the "golden era" of body building, just before steroids, ok well some of the guys are juicing, but for the most part, this is the real deal.  Knowing that fact made me feel a lot better about watching these guys, being a guy who doesn't even like to touch things like Muscle Milk, I have a lot of respect for people who have the discipline to simply use diet and exercise to achieve their fitness goals.  Whether or not you like how these men look, you have to respect the work it takes to get there.  Raise your glass of only slightly watered cask strength Bourbon (September is national Bourbon Heritage month by the way) and get ready to shock your mind and your gluts.

Goals...

There are a few things I want to do, and for the next couple of months it looks like I'm going to have plenty of time on my hands so I figured I'd put them out there to help remind myself.  They are as follows, in no particular order:

-Learn how to play the harmonica

-Apply to at least three grad schools

-Learn Spanish

-Frame my posters

-Finish The Incredible Lightness of Being

-Blog once a week

-Watch less TV

I'm sure there are a few more, but that's a good start.  Ok off to scour the resale shops of the earth for frames that will fit my posters.

"It's crazy that as a society that we allow this to happen to our kids."

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Like a Ton of Bricks...

I stayed at my folks house last night because I was too exhausted to make it home. When I got up and sat down to a bowl of Basic 4, one of my favorites, the Chicago Tribune was lying on the counter. I picked it up and, scanning the front page, noticed a small blurb in the bottome left corner showing a picture of a smiling girl. The text accompanying the photo read something to the account of "13 year old shot and is brain dead." Unbelievable, I thought, another kid in the hood dead from gang related gun violence. I flipped to the Metro section to see if my presumption was accurate. As I began reading, it wasn't the fact that some smiling little girl was dead that got to me as much as the realization that I actually knew her. Eternity Gaddy was one of the kids in the Summer program which I was taught at Humboldt park. I am not going to say that Eternity was my favorite student or anything, far from it, but I've always found it hard or insensitive, or at least unproductive to try to accuratly describe people who have died recently. So let's just say that I didn't know her well enough to give an accurate account of her character.

This is new territory for me. Death is something that I haven't dealt with very much in my life, but it seems that since my friend Hank died in a car accident, I've been faced with it more and more. Even more so, I see that these kids in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, and others in Chicago, who are seasoned veterans of dealing with death. Think about it, how many people do you know, personally, who have been shot and killed? I don't think I've ever known anyone up until now, and am not proud to say that now I do. If I had to guess how many of the kids I workded with this summer personally knew someone who was shot an killed, my guess is that the number would be more than fifty percent, but could certainly be much higher. Gun violence in Chicago's black neighborhoods is out of control. A quick internet search reveals numbers like 27 kids in the nine months so far of 2008, 196 Chicago school children in the last decade. According to a channel 7 news article, one demonstration occurred where participants painted signs with the number "32" repesenting the number of Chicago Public School children killed (in a certain amount of time that was not given) and by the end of the rally, the number was 33.

None of these statistics will keep me from working in the hood, nor will they keep me from bringing friends to those neighborhoods. I am not going to spend my time idly asking god to spare those kids. In fact I don't know how this will change what I do or think. I spoke with my dad about it and he pointed out that she was shot at five to two in the morning. He said that maybe if she hadn't been out past curfew, this would never have happened. His point seemed to be that if people would just obey the laws set in place for their protection, the would be protected. Obeying curfew may have saved Eternity's life this time, but is that the solution? Do we all need to be ordered around because we don't know what's good for us? I don't know, and I hope not.

When things like this happen, people come out of the wood work pointing fingers at whatever problem they think causes problems. I've heard them all, rap music, video games, MTV, lack of a good family, the list goes on. But what I see as the problem is more of a cultural thing.

I wrote about the summer Ultimate program on my family's blog and mentioned that the kids live in constant competition, unfortunetly they are competing to be cool, not smart, not better at sports, but who's cool. If you are less cool than the guy next to you, that is to say if you're wearing old jeans, shoes, jewelry, or have a less than par haircut, you get ripped on. If you can't fire back, well then you lose, and when you lose, that's it, you'll never hear the end of it. So why can't we have these kids compete to be smart and good at somthing productive? Why don't we harness that competitive spirit and put it to good use? We as a nation, glorify those who make it rich or are successful in spite of being ignorant or not being worth a damn (I was writing in response to my uncle ranting about Flava Flav and his reality show "The Flavor of Love). So, what might that have to do with the sudden increase in gun violence? It could be that these kids see the short term advantages of the life of gang bangers, it could be that they are stalked at school by gangs and are somehow coerced into joining (this was actually the case for a young man in Ed and Matt's program, although he had not given in and remained free from gang involvment). Whatever the case is, these kids have to work very hard to succeed at anything, even something as simple as staying out of trouble. Everything is harder in their lives.

I've been writing this entry while sitting at Lush and have been distracted and interrupted several times so I'm losing focus. I just thought that this was something I should write about.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-girl-shot-both-01-sep01,0,652061.story?track=rss