Content Nausea No. 28: Master of My Craft
People die, I don't care / You should see the wall of ambivalence I'm building / I got no love for the living
Welcome to the 28th edition of Content Nausea. It is my first as a 28-year-old. I did not plan that. You can read No. 27 right here. It was my most-read, which I appreciate. Thank you for being here. The welcome blog is here.
My earbuds died at some point after I crossed the Schuylkill River on Martin Luther King Drive, and the volume on my phone in my armband was too quiet to hear. I knew I was past the one-mile mark — that’s on the east side of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, right before the Rocky statue — and I wasn’t going to take the trouble to stop or break stride to unlock my phone in its clumsy case to check my distance. I was out on my own in a direction I had never run in before.
For the first time in years, I was running without a safety net. There was no easy way to cut back, no shortcut where I could give up, no public transit to get on. An “out-and-back” run is much more of a test than a loop. The city closed MLK Drive along the Schuylkill to provide more outdoor space to residents during the coronavirus pandemic. You get on it at the Art Museum. I didn’t make it far enough to see where you could get off, but as I passed under Girard Avenue, I realize that I was truly out there. It was just me, my feet, my mind and the cars whizzing by on I-76.
Even more so than the blisters that have found a home on my feet in the past couple days, Tuesday’s run was the closest I’ve felt to being “back” on a run. I left the house without my mask and didn’t realize it until I was a block away. I decided to keep going and head to MLK where there would be less people instead of doing the steps at the Art Museum. There was no resistance for my breathing, and that was seemingly transferred to the rest of my stride. I don’t think I’ve run that fast since 2011. It felt … good.
I will never be truly “back” as a runner, and physically, I know I’ll never come close. This week marked the 10-year anniversary of the official end of my running career, which was running the opening leg of the 4x800 relay on the first day of the MIAA Championships and setting a personal record at 2:09. I didn’t qualify for anything else, and I begged off running in the 4x400 on the second day (which is another story).
Earlier this month marked 10 years since I broke 5 minutes in the mile for the only times in my life. The first time I “did” it was the end of April 2010 — I outkicked Corey Armes from Baltimore Lutheran in the final 400 and yelled an expletive in the final 100 — and ran 4:58. I actually ran 5-flat, but I had been so close for more than a year, and it was making me a headcase, so my coach told me I broke it. A teammate’s dad let it slip the next week, but I was stubborn and indignant and didn’t believe him. But I’ve connected the dots. Thanks, Coach! The next week, though, I broke it twice, comfortably each time. So it’s on the record.
I was not talented, and going sub-5 wasn’t exactly “good” for our league, where the top runner won the mile at the Penn Relays in 2011 and went to Oregon. I was fine in the ‘B’ conference, but never qualified for anything individually for the ‘A’ conference championships. I knew I had maxed out and was operating on borrowed time. And that was fine. I knew I had a ceiling, and I understood how much work it had taken for me to get from where I started in August 2006 to where I finished in May 2010. It was really hard. It wasn’t fun for some stretches. There were other things in my life I wanted to do, and I was so worn down physically and mentally, especially by that final year. Plus, I wasn’t going to get the chance to do it with my best friends on a daily basis anymore. So I stopped. I ran a little in summer 2010 and more in summer 2011 when I was living at home and Ian was coming back from injury.
But outside of summer 2011 — I would stay up until 3 a.m. on Turntable.fm, meet at the Ma & Pa Trail at 8 or 9 the next morning for a couple miles, come home, take a nap, watch 30 Rock, log on and repeat, all while cashing in on AOL’s wild spending with Patch — the past two months have been the most sustained running I’ve done in a decade. My body hurts a lot. I’m pounding on my knees too much. I am not sure how long I can keep it up, and it’s hot now, so that’s a deterrent.
But it’s tapped into a feeling and some memories. When I turned around a little after the Girard overpass, I knew I was another 2.5 miles or so away from the end of my run. I stared up at the skyline and just did what my long-dormant instincts told me to: Go.
In Monday morning’s edition of Content Nausea, I mused why I disliked “Sweet Disposition” by The Temper Trap so much. Jacob illuminated it for me on Instagram this week. That song, apparently, features prominently in (500) Days of Summer (who knows, I don’t remember). Back in 2009, a girl told me the movie reminded her of me and that I should watch it. So I did, and I hated it. It’s lame! Anyway, thank you to Jacob for helping me to solve that mystery.
Emily is offering natal chart readings for $15 with all of the money going to charities for coronavirus relief. She did my chart a couple weeks ago, and it was an illuminating experience, even if I don’t completely understand it yet! Email Emily here, and your chart could be next.
Some content I listened to this week
The 052k20 playlist is still in progress, but the new HAIM single will feature prominently on it.
Charli XCX has Done It Again with how i’m feeling now. it is fine that none of us are writing the next King Lear during social distancing, but it is better than fine that Charli made how i’m feeling now. The singles were great. The final product is even better. There are no skips. It’s better than last fall’s Charli. The “7 years” and “detonate” back-to-back is killer. “party 4 u” takes it there.
I need to sit with High Off Life by Future for a little while longer, but “All Bad (featuring Lil Uzi Vert)” is the early standout for me.
The boys from Frass Green are back, too, with a great single:
Pre-order Death of Pop on Bandcamp before the end of the month, and the boys are donating proceeds to Thrive DC, an organization providing for the homeless in Washington, D.C.
Every Sun, Every Moon by I’m Glad It’s You popped up on my radar earlier this year with the single “Big Sound,” but I did not realize the tragic backstory for the record until I was reading a little about it today.
It makes the “Big Sound” line, “I’ve been baptized in the desert with the blood of my friends” move through the air in a different way.
Friday was a good music day. There’s still more to sift through.
Some content I read this week
Spent my week off (nothing like using vacation time during a global pandemic, baby!) staying away from a lot of the internet, which was nice, but I could not stay fully away.
The Philadelphia Inquirer had local fiction writers “conjure a picture of what our world — especially Philadelphia — looks like about a year from now.” The results, especially Tom McAllister’s imagining of a post-pandemic Philadelphia, are cool.
An oral history of Scottie Pippen telling Karl Malone, “The Mailman doesn’t deliver on Sundays.”
Real Life on masks and drone photography during the pandemic.
Rob Harvilla with a nice look back on Pitchfork 10.0s in The Ringer.
Penny Fractions looks at what our good friends in the private equity industry are up to in the music business.
Meaghan Garvey talks to Charli XCX about how i’m feeling now for Vulture.
Your weekly dose of Luke O’Neil in Welcome to Hell World:
I briefly convinced myself that there is some number of deaths some horrific massive number with real gravity to it that demands attention and action a tipping point type of number that we might reach whereby Republicans and “open the economy” types might stop acting like they are now. Is it 500,000 I wondered is it a million but if we’re being honest no such number likely exists. Instead what will happen is we will come to accept thousands dead every single day as another voice in the churning ambient chorus of suffering we do our best to tune out already much like with gun violence or unnecessary deaths due to the cost of healthcare or the thousands our military kills around the world. Many of us even the “good ones” like me and you already have started to do that in a way right or else how would we manage to function on a daily basis? How do you get up and measure out the coffee and heat up the water and poke your stupid face into the fridge for a nice piece of fruit every morning without pretending if at least for a while that no one is dying outside your walls?
This Bleacher Report feature on Super Bowl hero Sammy Watkins is … kind of nuts? And kind of unsettling? I don’t know, man.
Read the Val Kilmer feature.
Some content I saw or thought about this week
Some niche Maryland football jokes:
I finished The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism by Kyle Chayka this week, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Some of the Marie Kondo stuff felt a little more relevant this month, thanks to the celebrity chefs fighting.
I started to watch Detroiters, but the Comedy Central app is such a chore.
Thank you for reading the 28th edition of Content Nausea.
Death to all false profits
Around here we praise a dollar
You fuckin' hippie, wanna walk around in my shoes
And tell me how it feels?
So I have thread counts high and commissions high
Hourly rates—hi, a minute of your time?
Forget about it
—D.G.