Adventures in Onionism

I just finished Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint . It was brilliantly hilarious at times, but it didn't have a standard narrative plot structure building to any conflict/climax/resolution, and I felt the litany of fantasies and self-loathing got repetitive. (For some reason I've been thinking about plot structure lately; mostly after noticing that Charlie Wilson's War (the movie) didn't seem to have any convincing conflict, nor did Crazy Heart (speaking of which, the acting was good, but not as good as Coal Miner's Daughter , and it was entertaining, but not as entertaining as Walk the Line .)) Also, I finished second for the year in the male under 30 age group in PCTR's Grand Prix race series . I got a shirt and a coaster today. Now I'm up to 14 coasters, but still no mugs. Also no belt buckles. That needs to change. On a positive note, I am two datasets richer than I was when I woke up Thursday morning, so I have this great "I might actuall...

But I'm really not. I mean, I haven't even been running that much lately; I've been sick, it's been raining, and I've been listening to a lot of music ( Thao with the Get Down Stay Down , Vampire Weekend, Them Crooked Vultures, and just last night I rediscovered my love for all things Elephant 6). But anyway, here's an NPR article about barefoot running, and here's what shoe company Brooks has to say. Oregon voted to raise taxes to pay for stuff. What a novel idea . Kasparov wrote a fascinating piece on man v. machine chess for NY Review of Books . It might be gated, or maybe it's just me. [thanks JS] Oh, and I'm totally, totally disappointed politically lately, as Obama is apparently the Clinton-like centrist he promised he would be instead of, you know, remotely progressive, and interpreting one Senate loss by a poor candidate as anger over far-left policies instead of what I think it is: anger about Dems being a bunch of gutless wimps (who have...

School starts in earnest tomorrow. That means two days a week I have to actually be ready to teach by 8:00 AM. I know, I know, normal people have to be at work that early all the time. But I think grad school more than makes up for the easy schedule with its crippling depression. Not that I've had to deal with that lately--had a pretty good last couple weeks hanging out with all sorts of friends. Also watched Gran Torino (A-), Brodre (Brothers) (B; Haven't seen the remake yet, most critics think the original is better. Great acting but low production value), Fantastic Mr. Fox (C; I don't like much Wes Anderson), Elephant Man (B+), The Road (C), On the Waterfront (A if you ignore the history/politics), Deathproof (A; just a great action movie), and Duplicity (C+ I can't believe they tried for any serious emotion in this movie, it could have been great if they just went for 100% Ocean's 11-style sexy wit), with one more on tap right now.

I got home from Indonesia almost two weeks ago. I haven't go snowshoeing, nor have I really gotten any research done, but I have had a blast hanging out with friends I haven't seen in a long time pretty much every day since I got back. But apparently all the late nights took their toll on me and I have gnarly cold today, which explains why I'm not in the theater watching Avatar as we speak. I start teaching Wednesday at 8AM, so I've still got one day to get my act together. Anyway, I went to Sumatra. I flew to Medan from Kuala Lumpur. I wasn't in Medan long, but it was a welcome break from KL, in that I could actually get back into residential neighborhoods and wander down random car-free alleys. Then I went to Berastagi, where I climbed two easy volcanoes and ate some great fruit and street food. Then I went to Katambe and hiked in Gunung Leuser National Park for a day. I was planning to do a longer hike, but I belatedly discovered that the ATM's in the neare...

I just finished reading Christopher McDougall's Born to Run: A hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen . It's about an indigenous tribe in the remote Copper Canyon in Mexico, the members of which like to run a lot. A crazy American dude has lived there for years and got some of the cooler American runners to go down there for a race. There's also discussion of the proper motivation for running (joy not money), proper form (landing on your forefoot like you would barefoot, not your heel) and evolution (we evolved running down game that can't sweat as well as we can). That sounds like lots of tangents, but they fit together well. I liked it a lot more than I expected. I didn't really like an appearance by the author on a morning news show in which he seemed like a big tool pushing his pseudo-spiritual BS about barefoot running, but the dude totally knows how to spin a yarn. And he actually knows his stuff when it comes to ultras--b...

I briefly stopped over in Kuala Lumpur on my way to and from Sumatra. I wasn't all that impressed by the city, and unfortunately I didn't get to travel outside of it at all. I spent a couple days walking around Chinatown, the (small) old colonial area, Lake Gardens park, and the Brickfields area. The city is way more developed than I expected. Not that I want to hold it against other countries when they start to develop, but I think walking around outdoor markets with hundreds of individual stalls is fun, while walking around multi-story indoor air-conditioned malls is not. It seemed to me that Malaysia is at the stage of economic development where they are justifiably proud of becoming a New Asian Tiger or whatever, and the environment and aesthetics are temporarily (hopefully) relatively less important. I don't really know what I'm talking about, but that's how I felt--the sole downtown park felt abandoned, KFC, McDonalds and 7-11 were omnipresent, and being a pe...

David Small's Stitches is really weak compared to Craig Thompson's Blankets , although the depiction of the eponymous stitches (on page 190) is rather arresting and well done.

Packrafters Erin and Hig were in the NYT last week .

I returned yesterday from two weeks in Kuala Lumpur and Sumatra. Posts on that are coming. First, what I read while gone. The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb, about the attempt by three runners to become the first four-minute miler. Recommended by my friend Nano, I very much enjoyed this. There's not much to it in any deep literary or philosophical sense, but that also means it doesn't try to do any of those things and fail at it; it just tells an entertaining and suspenseful story (even though you probably already know the ending.) There are a few years' worth of 4:00-4:05 of attempts by each of the runners, and nearly all are recounted in detail, which can get a little repetitive, but as soon as this happens, the barrier soon falls and a few of the best competitors have a final showdown. I was happy to enjoy this; I've been underwhelmed by most running books I've come across ( Ultramarathon man , What I Talk about when I Talk about Running , Once a Runner ) so was ...

A couple from Scotland did a version of the Big Sky Alternate/Butte Super Cut-Off on the CDT and put up new maps for the southern half (which they did differently than I did) and a very handy overview map. Check it out.