Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 8 — Broken Down?
At the end was when something hurt. This was new. This wasn’t sore. This was different. Yet, I chocked it up to, well, just having run twenty glorious, goddamn miles. I guzzled water, I stretched, I ate a banana, I rode my bike home. At home, I stretched, I took an ice bath for ten minutes, took a nap. Katie and I hung out at the 312 Block Party at Goose Island for a bit before calling it a night at nine. All day, my right leg would blast with pain at every step.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of September 22, 2019
I respect the guy, but Malcolm Gladwell is not a genius. He’s not even that interesting. He’s perceived that way because he’s a well-spoken black guy. Yeah, I said it. And you’re all racists.
Hope Idiotic | Part VIII
Lou finally began making a little bit of money when he broke through to the Chi Star, a free daily paper owned by the Franklin News. It was designed to be a newspaper with training wheels in hopes that as the young readers aged, they would make the switch from the free commuter rag to a more mature newspaper subscription. It was the struggling newspaper business’ effort to survive by adapting the drug trade’s tactics; get ’em hooked for free when they’re young.
Hope Idiotic | Part VII
By mid-November, Lou had been living with Michelle for two months. She provided half of the dresser for him and cleared out space in the bathroom cabinets and her closets for him in an effort to make her place his place, too. But she refused to let him hang any photos of his friends or family. And there was no way he was putting his film trophy on display anywhere.
Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 7 — Easy Does It
Marathon training puts time and distance into relative perspective. Once you prove you can run seventeen miles on a Saturday morning, jogging a quick five constitutes an easy run. Six miles is nothing. It’s a breeze. It feels like less work than walking across the street to pick up my dry cleaning. Christ, I hate running errands.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of September 15, 2019
It’s okay to admit that you don’t know or understand something. In fact, it can be beneficial. It gives you the opportunity to listen better, differently, to learn something new and one day be the know-it-all you always knew you were.
Hope Idiotic | Part VI
The week that Lou arrived in Chicago, Franklin News, one of the largest media companies in the nation, laid off a thousand people. In the three months he’d been back, many other companies in his field had done the same. He wasn’t picky about whom he worked for, he just needed a gig. But every newspaper, magazine, radio station, marketing firm, advertising agency and public relations agency he could find wouldn’t even meet with him.
Hope Idiotic | Part V
Lou hit the San Francisco city limits just as night was coming down. He used the hostel book as promised to find a well-rated spot with a good view of the city. He’d never stayed in hostels before and was curious. He’d hoped to meet a few strangers he could make friends with for the night and explore the city with, but the place was pretty empty. It was too early in the summer for college students or Europeans to be backpacking their way through the country.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of September 8, 2019
Ed Sheeran makes club music for moms and preschoolers.
Hope Idiotic | Part IV
Years of overeating and not exercising had finally taken their toll on Chuck’s mom. She collapsed from a heart attack in her Indiana home — the same small, rundown place where Chuck was raised. She was recovering at the nearest hospital a few towns away. It was a massive attack requiring surgery to add stents and to repair the lining of her heart’s wall. She also had a deadly case of type-2 diabetes. Her body was crumbling. She was in a fragile state, and death seemed imminent.
I’ll be Disappointed if My Son Becomes a Cop
A young boy wanting to be a cop is not as bad as a young man becoming a cop. But a want that sticks around long enough is often gotten, especially if my son is raised to be the achiever we want him to be. If my son becomes a cop, if his want becomes his achievement, I’ll be disappointed. Not disappointed in him as much as I’ll be disappointed in myself and my wife. Because if my son becomes a cop, we were not good parents.
Hope Idiotic | Part III
A MONTH LATER AT WORK, JUST BEFORE LUNCH, CHUCK BURST FROM HIS OFFICE into the area where Lou and I sat. He ran his hands through his short hair, clawing his scalp.
“Fucking Jesus!” he said.
Lou and I swiveled our chairs toward him and leaned back ready for the meltdown.
“Department meeting!” Chuck said. “Now! Cuba Café! Neal, you drive!”
“I can’t. I have to get gas.”
“Good. Get it on the way back.”
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of September 1, 2019
I admit that I’ll be disappointed if my son grows up to be a cop.
Hope Idiotic | Part II
Moonlighting as a drunkard, Chuck Keller was the assistant manager of the communications department at palm gaming, the largest hotel and casino company in Las Vegas and the world. After Chuck graduated from Nevada State, he was hired as the news editor for Valley Life, the alternative weekly rag, where I worked as the A&E editor.
Hope Idiotic | Part I
SHORTLY AFTER THE HEIGHT OF AMERICA’S FLAGRANT PATRIOTISM FOLLOWING 9/11, and just before the dawn of The Great Recession, there existed a wonderful Italian restaurant called Bella’s Ristorante. It was built into the foothills of the Black Mountain Range just outside of Las Vegas in Henderson, Nevada, a few short and dusty miles from the Strip at the edge of a wealthy suburban subdivision. My best friends Chuck Keller and Lou Bergman adored the place.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of August 25, 2019
Sometimes, the book’s dedication comes before anything else. Everything you make needs to have a reason and an audience.
Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 6 — 16 Post-run Requirements
Running is as much a mental game as it is physical. My trick to placing well in races when I ran cross-country in high school was to tell myself, “The faster you run, the sooner it’s over.” That doesn’t work when there are 26.2 miles ahead of you. You have to take each mile on its own or group a few together. Make the marathon bite-sized. Savor it. Until that last mile. The faster you run, the sooner it’s over. But even when you’re done running, you’re not done quite yet.
Here are sixteen post-run requirements every distance runner must complete after each long run.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of August 18, 2019
Wedding toasts that mention God or Jesus are fine. Wedding toasts that detail the speaker’s marital troubles are not. But they do make for some thoughtful laughs.
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of August 11, 2019
If I am to die shrouded in suspected criminal activity, promise me you’ll refer to me by my three names and only by my three names. “David Isaac Himmel, the alleged political assassin and box wine bootlegger, spent time as a teenager in the Ozark Mountains hunting squirrel and shooting old Pepsi cans with a .30-30 muzzleloader. He was also really good at driving stick shift in San Francisco.”
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of August 4, 2019
Perception is not reality. Something that’s unfun for one person does not make it unfun for everyone. It doesn’t take a village, it takes enough people in that village.
Even the good insurgencies, over time, become the establishment.
Andy disassembled his weapon with lighting speed. He packed it away in the black backpack made specifically for a weapon of this sort. He bolted to the roof access door as fast as his little, chubby legs would carry him. He made his way through the condo/office building stairwell without being noticed just as he had done on his way up. Andy was good at his job. And for a nine-month-old baby, he was really good at it.