Running secrets

The thing about being a runner in 2014 is if you want to break any sort of record, you’d better be able to run at least a three minute mile. (Zero research on actual running records was done before writing this blog post.)

Because at this point humans have done it all. Women weren’t allowed to run marathons until forty years ago (again, no research), but now they definitely can. And the worst part is, I’m not a fast runner. So there’s really only one record left for me to break: the record for how many miles someone can run while only listening to Desperado.

The hit 1973 song by the Eagles. You can listen to it while you read this if you want:

I’ve listened to it a lot since I decided it was the best running song in the world and started listening on repeat on four-mile runs in the morning. I’m not a fast runner, so that usually adds up to over thirty minutes of listening to Desperado.

Did you click on that link to start playing it earlier? If you’re feeling bad that you didn’t here’s another one:

Then I signed up for this marathon, and made up a running schedule that involves a lot of running (surprise). And everyone knows, the best running song in the world is Desperado. 

I started running ten, then twelve, then fourteen miles, and I’m not a fast runner, so that’s almost two and a half hours of listening to Desperado on repeat. Sometimes I mix it up with one of the twenty cover versions (it's a very popular song), but usually not.

Now it’s been long enough that fourteen miles is starting to feel normal, now after about an hour my legs know what they’re doing and I’m just sort of on a three-minute-thirty-three-second-loop autopilot, it’s hard to tell the night time from the day, or one step from the next, or Desperado from the other songs I'm listening to. Just kidding, I'm only listening to Desperado.

The beat drops about four times in Desperado, which I think is the main reason, or possibly the only reason, I like it so much.

They say that running a marathon is proof of the human spirit, proof that people can do anything they set out to do. I say another equally beautiful test of human endurance, and one with way more really great beat drops, is listening to Desperado on repeat for four hours while running a marathon. 

And in a few months I’ll prove it, if I still have knees.

What eggs and toothpaste have in common

Lately I’ve been running an awful lot on Saturday mornings, enough to make me feel sick to my stomach for hours, and then suddenly super ravenous for hours. So hungry I could eat anything, I guess even a raven, if that's where that word comes from.

This type of hunger is for your stomach what novocaine injections are for your mouth and it seemed like the perfect time to try something I’d been wanting to make forever but was always too grossed out: a Nutella omelet.

Here’s how to make a Nutella omelet, in four steps:

1. I think the key is to make a very small, very thin omelet. I knew there was a huge chance this would be a huge waste of food, so I only used one egg, and the biggest pan. I found all my kitchen supplies in an unmarked box in the basement of my apartment building a year ago, but if your building doesn’t have a basement you can use whatever kitchen supplies you’re used to.

2. Another key is whisking the egg for pretty much forever, I recommend accidentally turning on the oven instead of the stove, and then once you realize your mistake accidentally putting the pan on the wrong burner. This gives you at least five extra minutes of whisking time.

3. Make the omelet.

The eyes are hazelnuts.

4. Add Nutella. It’s actually some sort of organic naturally-sweetened free-range chocolate spread with hazelnuts harvested by hand models but it tastes the same, anything ranging from this to chocolate toothpaste would probably work. I almost added cinnamon before I remembered how horrible a mistake cinnamon eggs were, but in hindsight I think cinnamon would have been fine because…

Nutella omelets taste amazing. 

They taste like crepes but from chickens instead of from crepe-producing animals, and chickens are the best and crepe-producing animals are the worst. Really it’s impossible to oversell this food experiment. But it is possible that they only tasted good because I was so hungry. The possibilities are endless with Nutella omelets. 

Here's a gross-looking close-up and a delicious-looking tube of chocolate toothpaste to break up the text.

Any sentence with the words "horrific" and "starfish"

I don’t recommend those conversations where everyone tries to see who has the most terrifying story that proves the world is ending, but if you do end up in one, I have a story that can definitely win every time.

People talk about a polar vortex, and smog in China so thick you can walk on it, or swim in it or whatever, but these stories all seem pretty quotidian compared to starfish ripping themselves apart alive. Read it again! Or don’t read it again. Close this browser and close your laptop!

Right now every starfish on the west coast has some horrible zombie disease that makes them walk all of their legs in different directions until they rip themselves to pieces. Here are my favorite article titles (it was hard to choose):

Mystery disease making starfish mutilate themselves then die

Starfish tear themselves limb from limb

Starfish tearing themselves apart in horrific epidemic

Scientists baffled as millions of starfish tear themselves apart

"It sounds like something from that Batman movie," I said to my deskmate as I held up a laptop full of images.

"Which Batman movie? The second?"

I was prepared for a lot of follow up questions but not that one.

“The one with Bane?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe the one with air? Really it seems like any of the Batman movies.”

She nodded as I made a mental note to read the Batman Wikipedia page.

I don’t know everything about Batman and I'm not even sure if it's capitalized. But I know that if there were a Batman movie about it being cold in the Midwest some people would say “That was a lame movie” but most people would say “I didn’t see that movie. It looked super lame. And I had way better things to do with eight dollars.” 

Why spend eight dollars on a movie when the Wikipedia page is free? Save your money for a trip to the beach to see some un-mutilated starfish while they still exist.

c

Chocolate is the only safe food

The best thing about the internet is realizing that any thought you have, someone else has had before.

When is it too late to have caffeine? Is my potted plant growing mold or are these spider larvae or is this what it looks like when it’s healthy? Is that John C Reilly’s voice in that TurboTax commercial?

Since I’m bad at tasting food but interested in cooking it the main thing I ask the internet is what foods are safe and normal to put together. You can put apples in eggs, and you can put potatoes in soup, and you can put raisins in curry and nuts in cereal and anything in anything as long as at least one person on the internet has said it's ok. Because the internet is just a giant metal laptop-shaped room full of your friends. 

But then last week, when I searched “can I mix peanut butter in greek yogurt” and nothing came up I noticed a related search at the bottom with tons of results: “peanut butter greek yogurt bodybuilders.” 

“A giant metal laptop-shaped room full of my bodybuilding friends!” I thought. But I was wrong. These people are not your friends. And they give super bad advice.

“Do it!” said the bodybuilders.

“I’ve eaten it four times today” said the bodybuilders.

“Edible” said the bodybuilders. 

That’s how I ended up ruining perfectly good peanut butter and perfectly good greek yogurt. I made the same mistake with tuna omelets and mustard salmon and then I learned my lesson and I’m writing it here to save you time: everything you read on the internet is a lie.

Except today I read any cat can run faster than Usain Bolt (not just cheetahs, house cats too), and I hope that’s true because I think it sounds amazing. What do I need to eat to get more "fast twitch" muscles? Would peanut butter tuna do it?

How old were you when you got into jazz music

My friend Boaz won free tickets to a jazz festival. To me the coolest part about winning tickets to a jazz festival is telling people you won tickets to a jazz festival, but they usually respond with “How was it?” so we had to go. 

As soon as we got there I realized that maybe for Boaz the best thing about winning tickets to a jazz festival might be listening to the jazz music, which is another example of how interesting it is to be friends with people with very different opinions than you. 

I liked the woman at the beginning of the show because she had seven different singing voices, including that low voice people use when they do impressions:

My ad was for a race car. What was yours for?

And also I didn’t like this woman because I think she’s twenty-three which means she’s three years ahead of me in the “be a cool jazz singer with cool hair and white glasses” game. I lose that game every time.

Then that woman left (her name was Cecile McLorin Salvant) and more people came onstage and it got really LATE, like dark in the theater and the music got relaxing and I felt very warm and later Boaz told me the exact moment I fell asleep was during a very loud drum solo. Which seems like something an old person would do. But it also seems like something a newborn baby would do. So maybe I’m just staying the same age? 

Twenty-six is a pretty good age to stay. I have red glasses and I’ve been practicing singing jazz music in the shower every day.