So we finally got back to town last night after travelling around a bit over the weekend, and immediately my wife started in on this site. The kids had finally gone off to bed and some ridiculousness like "Dancing with the Stars" was on the TV as my old lady and I both sat in our chairs with our laptops. I guess it's kind of a modern-day Archie and Edith, minus the laugh track.
Anyway, Marie Osmond was being tossed and launched all over the screen though the absurdness of this was completely lost on me. Perhaps if Gary Coleman was a contestant... Instead, I had my headphones plugged into my ears and I was busy trying to sync together the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line with Radiohead's Kid A. As odd as that sounds, it kind of works - the record (and by record I mean recording) starts with "Everything in its Right Place," which was offset against Leaf Phoenix and Reece Witherspoon singing Dylan's "It Ain't Me, Babe." From there, the actors went up to Johnny Cash's hotel room as the opening track slipped into, "Kid A."
But just as the opening bass chords of the rather chaotic "The National Anthem," struck like knives flying through the air, all hell broke loose for Johnny Cash. The Feds were waiting for him at the airport to peel apart his luggage for his stash, his wife was on the way out with the kids and life seemed to sound just like the wildness playing on my earphones.
Finally, when Cash was camped out with Waylon Jennings in some Tennessee motel, "How to Disappear Completely," burst on and that's when the experiment ended. My wife, as it often is, had another question.
"Hey, I noticed you haven't updated your little site in a while."
Everything is little to her. Like my little site, or my little job, or my little "hobbies." It's so condescending.
"Yeah, well, I haven't been home lately. I was on vacation with my family. Should I have told you guys to go away so I could throw some more verbal crap against the wall?"
She already knows that I do my best not to be a sports fan at home and I suppose this is a site about sports. I'm kind of like a chef that cooks all day at his restaurant only to go home to eat Dinty Moore beef stew from a can.
So yeah, I told her. Besides, I didn't know what to write that would be remotely interesting to anyone. Not that I know much about that to begin with, but at least I'm not going to pull that old Bukowski stunt and write about writers' block. That's really digging deep for nothing.
Anyway, I decided to wait for someone to post the Kid A/Walk the Line sync on YouTube or something. Then again, there is that theory out there that Kid A actually describes the events in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001 even though the album was released in October of 2000.Chuck Klosterman wrote about the theory extensively in his book Killing Yourself to Live. Check it out here.
I wonder if Thom Yorke and Johnny Cash ever met.
***
Check this out: I was selected to be a shoe tester for the shoe company, Brooks. Needless to say I'm pretty excited about it. What I do, I suppose, is wear the shoes I'm sent for my runs, write about it in a report and send the info along to the good folks at Brooks.
See, told you it sounded fun.
From what I have learned the shoe I'll be testing is Brooks' "Defyance," which is slated to hit the U.S. market in April of 2008. It supposed to be a neutral trainer, which is perfect for me. I don't like the featherweight racers or trainers, but the neutral and stripped down shoes for extremely efficient types with elegant biomechanics work best for me. Those clunky monsters that weigh more than 12 ounces are just way too much shoe for me.
Besides, my favorites are now long gone. The Nike Talaria, Nike Zoom LWP, Nike Air Mariah, Nike Zoom Air Hayward and the original Adidas Ozweego are about as perfect as running shoes can get, yet they are all very different. Oddly enough, I have been wearing some derivation of the Ozweego since July of 1996, though I'm down to my last pair and it looks as if it's the end of the line for that one.
Truth be told, the Talaria was the most comfortable shoe ever. They were like slippers.
Anyway, I'm excited to try out the Brooks Defyance. The people at Brooks should know that I will absolutely beat the bleep out of their shoe as I work it into my rotation of a half-dozen trainers.
That's how I roll.