Chicago

~ Mark

My first-ever trip to a very awesome city. I left my house earlier than usual because I’m 150 years old and like to move through the airport like the Dalai Lama. I was sad that after I first arrived, while taking the elevated train into town, I had to remind myself to stay off Twitter, and… y’know… gawk at the architecture. It was easier with my feet on the ground.

I was surprised at how cool The Bean was. Glad I got to catch it at a few different times of day.

Took a few hours to hit the Art Institute. Gotta say, Magritte is not my thing. I’ve rarely been so bored in an art exhibition. By far – by far – my favorite thing there was a collection of Ethel Stein’s weavings and textiles. It just blew my mind. Can’t believe that had that tucked away in a lower corner.

Lake Michigan is absurdly lovely. I wish Atlanta had some water nearby. I get it. While I was making my way down the Lakeshore Trail one morning, I stopped in the Chicago History Museum. I’d totally forgotten they had that Vivian Maier photography exhibit. The rest of the museum was just okay. But that Maier stuff and the Ethel Stein I mentioned earlier were my favorites from the trip. So glad I stumbled on those.

I also got to eat a Chicago-style hot dog before my next museum stop, so that was another huge victory. I’ll probably be making those at home.

The David Bowie exhibition at the MCA was cool… but it also made me realize I don’t care *that* much about his work. I’d never heard that he’d used a Verbasizer (Burroughsian custom software to remix text for lyrics and ideas), so that was a nice surprise. And the final room where there had three giant screens and a loud soundsystem for old concert footage? Very cool.

The Signature Lounge is at Hancock Tower is a total waste of money and time.

I can’t recommend The Experts at iO highly enough. Such a great improv gimmick: invite an outside expert/research/writer to lecture about their pet topic. The audience learns, the performers riff for 15-20, and then a round of direct Q&A leads to a few more shorter skits. Enjoyed it so much we got some more beer and got tickets for another show there later that night. So great.

I’m not much for pastries, but if you put food on a wooden board, you can usually count me in. And so we got a pastry board at Bristol to eat before I ate even more. Walked off the brunch through various neighborhoods I can’t remember and then a movie-nap. Never underestimate the vacation movie-nap.

Later highlights that afternoon were the big dumb Ferris wheel at the Navy Pier and dumb tiki drinks.

We woke up early to watch the Chicago Marathon, which, for a few minutes at least, had me convinced I should do a marathon. I’m about 95% sure that one of the runners was a bouncer at Signature Lounge. Kind of like how I saw one of the iO actors at a bar later in the weekend. Big city/small town. Seems like an amazing place to live. But it’s not my town. But I’m still excited to go back some day.

Is the sub-2 hour marathon imminent? Don’t hold your breath, and here’s why | The Science of Sport

~ Mark

So a man who runs a 59-min half marathon will not be able to sustain two back-to-back 60 min half marathons. It’s just not possible. And so therefore, before we can even consider the sub-2 hour marathon, we need to look at the ability over the half marathon. Until humans can run a half-marathon in under 58-minutes (and here, I’m talking low-57), it will not be possible to produce 59:59 twice in a marathon.

And that can be taken one step further, to 10km. If you are going to see a 57:x half marathon, then you should also be seeing a 10km that is substantially faster than the current 26:x. The 10km performance required to run a 57 is probably in the high 25s.

I’d never considered that. We may get there, but sounds further away than I thought it would be.

Is the sub-2 hour marathon imminent? Don’t hold your breath, and here’s why | The Science of Sport

Gone Girl

~ Mark

I read Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and really really liked it. It was a welcome change of pace from some of the other recent reading drudgery I’ve put myself through. Just really compelling in its own right. I love when you find an addictive page-turn-y book, whatever the genre, and it just makes you want to read more in general.

I only read this book because I heard that David Fincher had his recent movie adaptation coming out. I made it about ~80-85% into the book, and I just couldn’t wait any more before I saw the movie. Kind of a fun way to experience this particular one. I knew nothing about the story, but always had Affleck and Pike’s faces in mind as I was reading, but none of their movements or mannerisms I know from the movie now. I was already well past one big turn in the story, but one climactic scene in the movie tops just about everything. Recommended.

Gone Girl

~ Mark

Gone Girl. I loved this one. Pike and Affleck work as both archetypes and just really odd layered characters. Highly disturbing, and like Zodiac, has this seductive quality where you don’t care how long it takes to unfold. I saw it when I was ~80-85% finished with the book – I didn’t want to wait another day. There’s a good chance I’ll catch it in the theaters again. The soundtrack is great, too. As for updated David Fincher rankings… I’ll use recency bias as a tiebreaker, and let this edge in to the second slot:

  1. Zodiac
  2. Gone Girl
  3. The Social Network
  4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
  5. Seven
  6. Fight Club

Killing Them Softly

~ Mark

Killing Them Softly. A steady chain of transactions – literal and figurative distancing from violence – with a constant undertow of economic collapse/politicking in the background. Very heavy-handed, thematically, but it works. Crummy neighborhoods, bare infrastructure, sweat and damp. The scene with Liotta reduced to tears was more disturbing than any movie violence in recent memory. Odd visuals with the shallow focus and vignetting. I love that hyper-experiential scene with the guy getting hight and his fitful conversation – zooms, speed changes, audio shifts, etc. Too bad the packaging was off. This was much more thoughtful and strange than they sold it.

Decoding a Menu at Root & Bone – NYTimes.com

~ Mark

In a study of more than a million Yelp restaurant reviews, Mr. Jurafsky and the Carnegie Mellon team found that four-star reviews tended to use a narrower range of vague positive words, while one-star reviews had a more varied vocabulary. One-star reviews also had higher incidence of past tense, pronouns (especially plural pronouns) and other subtle markers that linguists have previously found in chat room discussions about the death of Princess Diana and blog posts written in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In short, Mr. Jurafsky said, authors of one-star reviews unconsciously use language much as people do in the wake of collective trauma. “They use the word ‘we’ much more than ‘I,’ as if taking solace in the fact that this bad thing happened, but it happened to us together,” he said.

Another finding: Reviews of expensive restaurants are more likely to use sexual metaphors, while the food at cheaper restaurants tends to be compared to drugs.

Decoding a Menu at Root & Bone – NYTimes.com

The Equalizer

~ Mark

The Equalizer. Average, with a few bright points here and there. I love the diner scenes. They build Denzel’s character as the precise, exacting, confident type, but I like the hints of compulsive behavior beyond that. Not just the careful folding of the kitchen towel, or the tea ritual, or the perfectly crisp button-ups, tucked in. There’s the opening and closing the door, flicking the lights on and off, maybe even the car window opening and closing, rearranging the skulls. Nice little wrinkle.

Visually its a mess. It reminded me of the colorfully shifty, dizzying jumps and zooms that Tony Scott used in Man on Fire, except without the thoughtfulness and consistency with mood. Also weakly similar to that movie: there is an art to “walking away slowly from an explosion” scenes, and you have to earn it. You can’t just shove one in the middle of the movie.

I enjoyed the fight scenes. But have to mention something that drove me crazy: the Sherlock Holmes-ian superpower thing in the office brawl. I’m talking about the thing where time is paused or slowed for a moment, where we get to see how the hero analyzes and calculates all the situational details before getting in a rumble – who is where, what weapons they have, the layout of the room. I don’t mind this sort of movie cliché, or this way of making the hero look awesome. That’s fine. What made it frustrating was that the movie had already shown us those details. I assume it was done to heighten the tension beforehand. But it’s draining to show a guy sitting ready with a knife, and then show us Denzel noticing the guy has a knife. I love that stopwatch, though.

All that said: whatever Denzel has, I want it. He’s got charm coming out the ears. And Marton Csokas is awesome.

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life

~ Mark

I read Adam Phillips’ book Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life, and I wish I’d enjoyed it more. I probably would have, if only I were more familiar with Freud and Shakespeare (King Lear and Othello are frequently discussed). I’ve read a couple of his others that I really liked (Going Sane and On Kindness).

This one a lot of “What does it mean when we say ____?” kind of stuff, and a good bit of historical/etymological looks at how our our language has developed ideas like “getting away with it” or “getting out of it”. The best recurring theme for me was the idea of omniscience, and how it relates to frustration (assuming we know what we need; reluctance to seek advice or try new things), escapism/prediction (assuming we know what we’re avoiding, or that we are in fact avoiding it), tyranny (false confidence about someone else’s needs), avoidance (“we mustn’t let knowing do the work of acknowledging”), etc.

It seemed a bit more impersonal and less psychological than what I remember of the other two. Still, some good stuff here and there, and Phillips has a knack for aphorism.

For Arianna Huffington and Kobe Bryant: First, Success. Then Sleep. – NYTimes.com

~ Mark

Kobe Bryant: Exactly. I’ll give you an example. When you watch me shoot my fadeaway jumper, you’ll notice my leg is always extended. I had problems making that shot in the past. It’s tough. So one day I’m watching the Discovery Channel and see a cheetah hunting. When the cheetah runs, its tail always gives it balance, even if it’s cutting a sharp angle. And that’s when I was like: My leg could be the tail, right?

Arianna Huffington: That’s amazing.

KB: Inspiration surrounds us.

Maybe it was a cheetah named Dirk Nowitzki. Also really interesting in this interview: both of them weaning themselves from the “I only need {{very small number}} hours of sleep” lie. They both wised up and made changes to sleep more.

For Arianna Huffington and Kobe Bryant: First, Success. Then Sleep. – NYTimes.com

Living the GoPro Life

~ Mark

When the agony of missing the shot trumps the joy of the experience worth shooting, the adventure athlete (climber, surfer, extreme skier) reveals himself to be something else: a filmmaker, a brand, a vessel for the creation of content.

Living the GoPro Life

15 Questions for San Antonio’s Matt Bonner

~ Mark

Here is a very rudimentary formula I came up with for rating a sandwich:

Score on a scale of 1-100:
A = bread
B = meat
C = fixings
D = sauces
.4(A) + .3(B) + .2© + .1(D) = overall score on a 0-100 scale

Each ingredient is weighted based on its level of importance to a good sandwich. Please note that the coefficients can certainly change when dealing with specialty sandwiches (for example, a steak and cheese would have a higher value placed on meat).

15 Questions for San Antonio’s Matt Bonner