Cypress Hill - Hand On The Pump

Cypress Hill MOTM

I've not stopped running, only recovery from some injuries that have finally resolved and I had to switch running shoe manufacturers as Nike is really too sexy for my running habit, unable to stash enough of my favorite shoes under the bed, running out of time really and interviewing every runner I know with a battery of questions keeping in mind distance and training styles; Nike has had to step aside to allow me to seek out a new and dependable shoe -- that quest continues as does training....now, I am nearly in the middle of training for the half marathon in only 5 weeks, this is the one I participate each year around Halloween in North Conway, New Hampshire it's a fun race, my favorite distance giving me plenty of opportunity to restrategize, recover, recompete, rexhaust, refuel and re-empty the tank in the event I took 3rd place last year in my division of 35-39 year old women, this year I am preparing to compete with women 40-44, a group of ladies that are incredibly competitive and athletic and NOT running a good race unless they are of a distinctly badass fitness level so I am going to keep my head straight and do my best and rely on my training, which, right now includes lots of hill and speed work on the TM toggling between quick feet and brief recovery intervals or progressive and relentless climbs at a pace on this side of failure, also some very speedy rides on my 7.5 mile commute to and from work riding a very peppy and lite K2, clipped in, adding this to training is keeping me limber for the weekend 14 milers and helping to stretch the quads after the pre dawn tempos and weight room sessions, Cypress Hill is really the best match for my training program, their compositions are as dark as my star lit center of the road hauls to the gym, i get pretty scared at times (i feel like there are crepuscular iridescent eyes watching me from behind old pines) but CH's music speeds me up and keeps me ahead of the tic that could throw me off tempo, cuz alot of this training shit is about tempo after all, I mean, entering hte stage of periodization approaching the event date, I'm one week into the first microcycle of training--there will be 6 microcycles in this training period before my event, with 5 weeks to go, my mileage will increase with the next to final cycle containing of two 13.1 mile tempos run to roughly simulate my race performance, followed by the last cycle, or, week 5, where i pull back on the reins, I am very excited about periodization while I prepare for this event because i need the freaking map and once it is over, my mileage will drop off some, then increase again and another bunch of cycles will be organized for first event of the new year, a 10K New Year's Day 1.1.12 -- a really hard race for me actually, it's not my favorite distance to race, back to very fast feet intervals, but First things first, THE HALF, I spend alot of time training to Cypress Hill, i recommend it for you.
(this makes me run fast lol)
Being the hunted one is no fun
Here I come son, yo I think you better run
Better run more, and move a little faster
Second of thought and I'm coming to blast ya

_Amy Winehouse - He Can Only Hold Her. (with lyrics)

Nelly Furtado Hey Man

Nelly Furtado, MOTM

I haven't written anything about the marathon or the 40 mile birthday run because I'm still processing what these events mean to me, the marathon race is so far the toughest challenge that I've attempted because of the distress my body feels and I try to be conservative and smart with my execution of the race but the bottom line is that I reach a distinct end in my energy supply and it's never at mile 26.2, it's always before that but this time my end came at mile 24 and that was a ton better than what it was the year prior when it came at mile 20 and felt in trouble but how I feel when it's over is what i really focus on a sense of accomplishment is a positive result and worth all the effort the 40 mile birthday run was also a good challenge one that didn't deplete me as I had predicted but I also paced myself not at race pace but at a pace that would allow me to complete that mission, with the running support of my neighbor Toni, and finally at the end of it I was very tired and slept snugly and now on to wonder exactly where all this ultra running will take me ultimately, and these fairly big weeks of summer mileage, wanting to discover if my dream to run a 100 mile race is really a reasonable one, feeling that fit and that trim, fit and trim enough to complete that race within a 24 hour period would have to be my goal and I won't start it unless i felt certain thankfully I know myself well enough to make the appropriate prediction there before the event so I guess maybe i'll start looking for a 100 mile race and see what comes of it so I chose Nelly Furtado for the MOTM because it was her song that got me stoked for the marathon 'Hey, man!' and my kids like her too which is fun for all of us, her dj scratching very well produced songs all have very real requests inside them and they are tender things i relate to because complicated relationships can be trying and celebratory and intense and lovable and frustrating and new and exhausting even the relationships we have with our children shift across a spectrum of emotions and energy and sometimes, when it feels like I am not recognising my son as he grows and reaches out, it's totally vital to listen to a song that draws it all back together neatly so I don't lose sight of how to really love them and what they do/who they are that gives me a charge and makes me proud and swell with joy, after all, when the day is over and they rest deeply I can do that also and know that we're safe and saved, sometimes maybe, by what we're delicately reminded of through a sweet song.

MOTM Dave Grohl

Something about South Florida that I enjoy are the people, they're laid back in an unexpected way and when you need them the most they're mostly unreliable like the guy who gave me the wrong directions when I left the hotel for a run, which could've presented real problems but for the fact that I can run like the energizer bunny and back tracking won't tax me, whatever, I was told by a couple of young girls intrigued by the length of my hair that I in fact look like a South Floridian, a new found aesthetic of mine I embrace fully and hope to return there asap since clearly that's where I belong--a f'real South Floridian that I met and became fond of was a drummer from a band seen at a smokey bar in Lauderdale by the Sea, like most drummers he rattled off his top three picks Peart, Copeland, Grohl... there is some flexibility there but most can agree that the first two drummers are demi gods to those with strong percussive desires/dreams and then Grohl such a strange pick I think though I get it and while he's the x-factor in a drummer's top three I think its a smart move, did I fail to mention bands play till 4 o'clock in the morning --too much fun--having just enjoyed Iron Maiden, the conversation about Nicko McBrain quickly moved to Dave Grohl who seems like his own brand of monster and who is actually fantastic at many instruments -- like he's good at anything he touches and he's kinda unsettled working all kinds of project not the least of these is Nirvana, Foo Fighters,


you hacked my shit. i know who you are. FOO'

IF YOU HACK MY SHIT....YOU HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON YOUR HANDS

Slash w/ Dave Grohl & Lemmy Kilmister - Ace of Spades: 2010 Golden Gods...

Wilco - Jesus, Etc (clip)

MOTM Jeff Tweedy

Jesus, don't cry
You can rely on me honey
You can combine anything you want

I'll be around
You were right about the stars
Each one is a setting sun

Tall buildings shake
Voices escape singing sad sad songs
Tuned to chords strung down your cheeks
Bitter melodies turning your orbit around

I know you saw this from a shit shake away that is if you've been watching and listening with a Wilco slant (one reason why this blog is a few days late) that's a big bowl of oranges and what springs from it is a spatter of nutritious juice that is a juicy Mr Tweedy a vitamus spray a lyrically stable significance that clenches a very deep part of me one that is better suited for a world where pretending is effective [just] not to anyone but me or it would be failure a failure as in a text sent hurling into the undesired future of the recipient a chord or progression of intense real that makes Jeff Tweedy so pretty it's like hard for me to even look at him without feeling like i could curl up with him in a major way and get to the heart of the matter and it's not about sex or sexlove even though I'm convinced that every things' baseline is sexual, but not this, specifically about really looking at desire and balancing it delicately on a point that intersects the scientist that exists in all of us and the romantic non scientific in all of us, that like me, wishes its ability to pretend had become a facet somewhere the evolutionary plane perhaps around the time when mating erroneously became lovemaking or something but Tweedy has encouraged me not to stray from recognising a talent beyond most and when I use the word tidy, I mean it with all due respect and not meant to establish a quality to his appearance but rather the sum of Tweedy's complicated parts even the parts that are dark and disheveled and at one point perhaps dependent on controlled narcotics emerges a perfection a talent that uses confusing bytes to create a whole that is, if you listen with a Wilcritical ear, a passionate nerdy and it makes me very very happy when I hear the exactness of a person's talent the event of that artist who has recognised his own potential and not just in working hard but in the knowing he's good and in also recognising that his ability to speak to people live from the stage without the context of the musical float causes a stumble with an artistic bent the kind of bent that makes us smile knowingly even though we don't know that kind of inner torment so prevalent in those people who excel in a way that alienates us but with Tweedy as he has struck a method that gestures to us on purpose, and with the connection but give him notes and out pours some beauty that is really special to me despite his unsettled lyric but I am so impatient with dumb that only through the darkness even a teeny glimpse into his type of art is a gift fit even for me, Tweedy here (fyi, his drummer is killer):
there is something wrong with me
my mind is filled with silvery stuff
honey kisses, clouds of fluff
oh distance has no way of making love
understandable

Wilco - Jesus, Etc (clip)

Dire Straits - Down to the waterline [Dortmund live '80]

Vinyl Revival MOTM Mark Knopfler

There has been a vinyl revival in my house, my collection of many years has been unearthed because I decided to go to the DJ section of Best Buy and purchase a turntable one of the features of this turntable allows one to rip the albums onto the computer, a feature I won't use; the reason for the vinyl revival? My children...it's time that they listen to a whole albeit half of an album, i am tired of a disliked song being changed so easily, what ever happened to an appreciation of the entire record, listening to the whole work from start to finish then maybe a song once ignored finds you in that mellow mood and now sounds fantastic but as demonstrated by my sons, a song that is disliked NEVER has to be listened to, or perhaps learned to appreciate, perhaps it's not about the song but about YOU or ME or HOW WE LISTEN; I am quite fond of my record collection which includes Pink Floyd, The Doors, America, Elton John, The Call, 77's, Rush, Iron Maiden, Rita Coolidge, U2, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Wings, Grateful Dead, The Beatles, David Grisman, Miles Davis, CSNY, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Johnny Cash, ELO, Queen, Whitesnake, Styx, Doc Watson, Willie Nelson, Lita Ford, Patsy Cline, Rollingstones, Def Leppard, Van Halen and others but you get the idea that there is alot of material there and a variety of musicians to appreciate and so I must share and it is my duty as a mother of my sons to share with them the things I love most about music which is so funny because years and years ago I bought my father 'Brothers in Arms'(1985) a record put out by the British rock band Dire Straits and I bought it because 'Walk Of Life' at the time was the song used as a sound bite by some channel's daily or weekly coverage of great moments in MLB games and I can still hear it to this day and so I figured out who it was and bought the cassette tape for my dad but managed to fall in love with Mark Knopfler and commandeered this tape whenever possible and so think of how remarkable it is that all these years later and just announced on this VERY DAY that Mr. Knopfler has, on March 10, 2011, entered once again into the studio to record yet another record and I'll say that not only does he hold my personal title for one of the best moments in guitar solo history, but his confident tidy yet laid back and entirely very sexy style of playing that cherry red strat continues to make me crazy in fact, Dire Straits' first album (1978) and self titled holds another title of one of my top ten favorite albums from stem to stern, and one of my all time favorite songs on the whole entire planet earth 'Down To The Waterline' (the sweetest final note) and my kids now know every song on the album and know when to air guitar the talent of Mark which pleases me and warms me and it's so funny how things with the kids can move a parent or cause a parent to swell with pride and for me, it's in the sharing of my records and the moments I see them recognize the beauty of the notes strung together so elegantly the ones that are transmitted from the grooved vinyl to needle to speaker with a new found technique for dancing that keeps the skip at bay my children will learn about the greatest musicians of all time one at a time and I will see to it.

My Morning Jacket - I'm Amazed (Live on Letterman)

MOTM Jim James of My Morning Jacket

You know I've been thinking this week about my earliest remembrances of time keeping an awareness of the passage of moments that led to my father walking through the door each day at the same time much like the man who dropped the hammer off the roof and each time he did, while his daughter stood watching below, the sun would rise but when her father died, the sun rose just the same though she did not expect that it would (an illustration of David Hume's strange brand of empiricism as taught by Dr. Craig Keen) it's not that I came to expect things to happen because of the predictability of some events in childhood it was just the predictability I came to rely on, anyway, I suddenly remember that as a youngster my days were punctuated by regularly occurring events and each day was predictable except on vacation weeks or my summers, for the summers I would float in the pool and watch the trees grow, I felt gifted, then I would blink and the trees would grow again blink/grow blink/grow and repeat because I could not keep from blinking no matter my best effort to stop....I think music has so much to do with our earliest understanding of time as more of a real thing, a measurable distance sort of related to the cool metronome of ticks that pile up if you happen to pay attention and maybe it was the beginning of the record or the first note of the song and then the resolve of the song but a formative understanding of time passage came through the song and when I loved the song enough I would return the needle with precision into the gap, the 0 between songs, so as not to scratch or smudge the sound 3:18 was about right, then again and again I could burn a whole hour down blinking and listening to the B side song of a 45 (ahem Tina Turner, if you must know) just as building with Legos for a child builds an understanding of how construction into the surrounding space however high and however wide music was the score for the everyday, space and time, and here I am, still preoccupied with space and time, able to run nearly a half mile in the time it takes that song to wind down, there is much about the sport of running that is concerned with time and if you consider trying to become competitive, the sky's the limit and of course your effort put forth; when I chose Jim James to be the MOTM it was for so many reasons but I'll be honest, one was the photo you see of him with that Flying V, good god, and of course something else that is so unique about him in My Morning Jacket is his vocals, often, when I completely let myself become absorbed is his music, his vocal tone takes a position of an instrument where I don't can't or am unable to understand his voice but yet there is melodic quality that is so awesome I made my 9 year old Elijah stop and listen and he just looked at me but I had my eyes shut and I was saying like 'see?' and 'hear that?' and 'shhh' and 'right here!' until finally he saunters off I think Eli is still working on his sense of time or something because My Morning Jacket has been playing the house for 3 days and you'd have exactly a hard time missing the genius in Jim James, his writing is fantastic and the influence of Neil young seems especially obvious when his vocals were recorded kinda like singing into a deep well, especially his acoustic recordings -he's big into the Beatles you can tell the complex characteristics of his songwriting but he can't help he's such a great song writer and writes pretty much all of it for My Morning Jacket- finally among the most organic of processes the one that produces his type of art and it gives me a charge - the flying V helps not far to look to find an old soul rocker - he is the one that draws me very quickly i don't try to listen past the chilly undercurrent of a super intense falsetto he's easy to love just an indi guy with a raw non ego very open plan to the vocals SIde note: Yim Yames (a moniker of his) has a neat solo album out of covers that are acoustic and quite delightful http://www.yimyames.com also check out monsters of folk http://monstersoffolk.com

_Amy Winehouse - He Can Only Hold Her. (with lyrics)

MOTM Amy Winehouse

God her death totally sucks at 27 is unacceptable really

It's hard for me to come to this point in the year without pause, a deliberate one, one that is heavy and slows like molasses that was inadvertently refrigerated by someone who shouldn't be poking through your baking supplies anyway--no matter--through this blogging I've determined that I like pauses and there are pauses in strategic places throughout the year--without reviewing them now, I'll mention them again as the year progresses--there is something exactly unlike taking pause when it comes to running, the sport commands a rhythmic pace, like that part of the heart that is the origin of the impulse that is manipulated when an artificial jump start is necessary, that prime moving part of the body, the origin of the heart beat, that place from which the energy that our body needs to perform, presses out meeting some resistance, then moves deliberately to the muscles feeding and nurturing but this central place is in our chest and at times that could be a metaphor for so much about what drives us and makes us reach if you could find a place on the body that generates that kind of passion, it couldnt be from our mind, I dont use my mind when I run -- i've heard that running is about love and I have refuted that because I love other things that I don't do or even do even better than running; there is difficulty in getting me to admit something soulful, but i do understand the desire for the heart to love and attract, running just might be the hardest thing I do with my body and it seems like there is something that drives it and I can admit that there is something soulful for me and music - this is not a brain activity for me - a measure of my love for music can be found in the effort I make each day to get my dose, probably like most people except we don't talk about it other than when something comes on that really sucks and our sails collapse, I've learned to listen to Amy Winehouse with a critical ear and not the kind that deconstructs its parts but I've had to consider her influences and her style which is so lounge-y, 50's wind instrumentation, with a very heavy ska vibe that I really find so unique and, Amy, I consider her quite prolific as a song writer, as one of those artists who takes me flying out of what I know or have experienced and shows me that something new is happening with a combination of styles that is pioneer-like in a very exciting sort of way, where there is a distinct point a place where the mind drops off and the heart grabs hold of the reins, it's why we energize, it's why we swell and smile and share -- so while it may not be love I'm talking about, there is definitely a correlation between romance and being totally present with the hope and promise of being inspired.