Very quiet adventures in the very quiet car

by Mister Smearcase

Penn Station is a terrible building but it has its small charms: newsstands that carry quite a lot of magazines, an old-fashioned departure board with moving parts, and a few comfortingly familiar folkways. People stand and watch the board, for instance, and then, despite the fact that Amtrak doesn’t oversell trains, the instant the board says “METROLINER WASHINGTON BOARDING 12W”, the crowd surges toward gate 12 as if this were the last train out of a war zone.

I’m an absolute shark in these waters, because usually when I’m getting on a train, I’m going to be there a good long time, and I want a window seat so I can 1) lean against the window when it’s time to sleep, which isn’t comfortable but should be, and 2) more easily plug my phone in since no matter how many books I bring, all I ever do on a train trip is read the Harper’s Index, do the Times puzzle, and then sink into the spiritual quicksand of the smartphone FOREVER.

Lately, there’s another factor that finds me cutting off the elderly and disabled to make sure I’m near the front of the clumpy non-line thing that forms around the beleaguered gate agent. It is the quiet car I speak of. (And then I speak no more.)

The Times had an article about the quiet car, or maybe I should go ahead and capitalize it: The Quiet Car. The regrettable pull quote that makes everyone who rides The Quiet Car seem like Roderick Usher or the alternate universe librarian version of Donna Reed in It’s a Wonderful Life, by association: “Respecting shared public space is becoming as quaintly archaic as tipping your hat to a lady, now that the concept of public space is as nearly extinct as hats, and ladies.” Does anybody still wear a hat? But truly. Respecting public space is not that mousy a thing to wish for.

I love quiet. Well, I just like it sometimes. I like being able to have it. I think what has happened is that I live in a city where much of your day is spent in situations where there can be no reasonable expectation of existing in your own soundspace, so I’ve basically gotten completely psychotic about something I was originally just a little uptight about.

The sound of bachata from a leaky pair of headphones that overrides my own musical choices at this point spurs bloody fantasies in me. I spend absurd sums at the 2-3 restaurants in my neighborhood that don’t have a television playing sports at all times. Every time I walk out the doors at the end of the long echoing tunnel out of my subway station, I feel like the chorus of prisoners in Fidelio who are released and see the sunlight for the first time in, well, ok, in this case 45 minutes. (Oh, whatever. I hate Fidelio.)

Part of the problem is that there’s a, to me, counterintuitive social contract that you can’t say anything because you don’t want to stop anyone from banging their own fucking drum. I broke this contact once. A guy was riding an uncrowded C train with me and had his music playing through his phone’s speaker. I said, in as honeyed a tone as I could muster “do you have any headphones?” He turned a deadish, hateful gaze on me and said “could you knit somewhere else?” It’s times like these when I wish I were 6’2″ and not knitting a dainty lace-pattern cravat and people had at least some fear that I might kick their ass.

Like the Times columnist, I recently got shooshed on the Quiet Car. I wasn’t using my cell phone, but I struck up a quiet conversation with the woman beside me. Quiet conversation is a Quiet Car grey area, it seems to me. I guess what I looked like to the shoosher was those people on my subway line that I always give a futile withering glare* and to whom I want to say “she’s sitting right next to you. I think she can hear you fine without you should yell.” Quiet is relative.

You begin to wonder what behavior runs absolutely no shoosh risk. Knitting needles occasionally click, and I’ve come to suspect I am not the world’s quietest chewer. I said to the person I was shooshed with, “do you mind if I eat here?” and she said “of course not!” like I was slightly nuts, which I took to mean she on the Quiet Car but not of the Quiet Car. This turned out to be true. She had sat there because there were no seats elsewhere.

It turns out to be ok to be shooshed on the Quiet Car. It’s reassuring really, because then you can tell yourself you’re just someone who likes a little rest from the noise of the city and not a total quiet fundamentalist and OMG I kind of left off in the middle of a sentence I was typing at work and then came home on an A train where a guy was playing (standing up!) the Bach cello suites which, don’t get me wrong, I’ve known and loved since I was in high school but SHUT UP I WANT TO LISTEN TO THE NEW VAMPIRE WEEKEND. It’s not about quiet. It’s about choice. That didn’t totally make sense or loop back to the Quiet Car, but it sounded like a conclusion so let’s call it a blog entry!

*I am afraid I have built up such muscle in my withering glare that when I move to California, where everyone isn’t wholly inured to anything short of gunfire, it may kill people.

Posted on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 under Public space, Travel, War, Whatever, Words | 4 comments »

The original underground superstar

by Bryan Waterman

Late last week Taylor Mead — the Lower East Side legend widely heralded (by himself and others) as the original underground film star — passed away in Colorado at age 88. From the Times obituary:

Mr. Mead was the quintessential Downtown figure. He read his poems in a Bowery bar, walked as many as 80 blocks a day and fed stray cats in a cemetery, usually after midnight. His last years were consumed by a classic Gotham battle against a landlord, which ended in his agreeing to leave his tenement apartment in return for money. At his death, he had been intending to return to New York after visiting a niece in Colorado.

Fans have been quick to assume he died of a broken heart.

His final film appearance came in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). Here’s the last scene:

In 2005 he was the subject of the documentary Excavating Taylor Mead:

He read his work regular at Bowery Poetry Club, which will hold a memorial tonight, and at the Poetry Project:

Mead is perhaps best known for his work in Warhol films in the 1960s, including Taylor Mead’s Ass (1964) and Nude Restaurant (1967-68). But Taylor always protested he was a superstar before he hooked up with Andy. He had begun his acting career in the 1960 Beat classic The Flower Thief, directed by Ron Rice. Again, from the Times obit:

Warhol explained how “The Flower Thief,” which he had nothing to do with, had happened. “Taylor was in San Francisco in ’56 when the Beat poetry scene got going,” he said. “One day he stood up on a bar and, over the noise all the drunks were making, started screaming some poems he’d written. Ron Rice saw that scene and began following him around, filming him with black-and-white war surplus film stock.”

Warhol became aware of Mr. Mead from his poetry readings in New York in the late 1950s, and they met in the early 1960s. In September 1963, Mr. Mead accompanied Warhol on a cross-country trip to Los Angeles. The entourage filmed scenes for what would become, in 1964, Mr. Mead’s first film for Warhol, “Tarzan and Jane Regained … Sort Of.”

Mr. Mead played Tarzan, edited the film and handled the sound. On screen, his sarong kept falling off while climbing trees, prompting a critic to say that he really did not want to see any more two-hour films of Mr. Mead’s derrière.

Warhol wrote a letter to The Village Voice saying that after searching “the vast Warhol archives,” he could find no two-hour film of Mr. Mead’s behind. “We are rectifying this undersight,” he said, and soon made what would become a little-seen cult classic, the title describing in three words precisely what the critic did not want to see (though the coarser Anglo-Saxon term was used instead of the French).

Taylor was a couple years older than Andy. He was also older than my grandmother. But he embodied something quintessentially modern, youthful, fuck-all, and whatever it was I hope they can’t evict that. May it moon film critics and landlords alike forever.

Posted on Monday, May 13, 2013 under Art, Death, Film | 2 comments »

Stones Throw (Pt. 1)

by Jen Mandel

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It was a busy Saturday, one in which we were going to run errands and getalottastuffdone.  Thee Perfesser, glued to his busy-screen as ever, noticed the news going around that the Stones were going to play a show at a small local venue, and that tickets were $20 apiece.
 
We’ve both been to a million shows in our lifetime, but we’d never seen The Rolling Stones live in concert.  One would think that someone like me, who’s been going to shows since she was 16, (actually, younger if you count No Nukes), would have checked that one off years ago.  But I’m not a fan of stadium shows, and I can probably count on one hand the big acts that I’ve seen: Genesis, Prince… I can’t think of who else.  My most vivid memory of a stadium show actually belongs to my oldest/dearest friend:  She went to see the Stones at the L.A. Coliseum or Forum or whatever the state-of-the-art large venue was at the time – and what started as a quiet afternoon on the lawn became roiling waves of hyperactive human bowling pins.  She’s a tall girl – almost six feet – and yet she was pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the crowd so tightly that she was lifted off her feet and dragged around.  She never found her shoes.  

Now me, I’m barely five feet tall, so diving into a huge crowd just to stare at somebody’s back all night, or worse get trampled, is not my recipe for a good time.  But as the morning wore on, I couldn’t shake the thought that this might be my last and only chance to see the Greatest Living Rock Band In The World up close and personal.  

“Let’s just drive by and see how long the line is” I posited.  “But, what about all our errands”? Thee Perfesser is sometimes the more pragmatic of the two of us.  “It’s the Rolling Stones!” I replied, but deep down I sort of hoped that it would be obvious that we weren’t going to get tickets so that we could just get things done.  We were both inclined to ignore the hype and just get on with our day, but this thing had started to gnaw at us like a rock in our shoe.  “Okay”, Thee Perfesser agreed, but we were both thinking that we would see a line miles long and then we’d be free.  It was a little out of our way, but what the hell.  

I should mention at this point that Thee Perfesser was hobbled by an injured knee, and so was on crutches and in pain – not ideal line-standing or concert-going conditions.  I dropped him off at the end of the line and miraculously found all-day parking 2 blocks away.  Had I already used up my miracle ticket on parking, or was it a sign that better things were in store for us?  

Back in line, we learned that it was going to be a lottery process:  1 ticket per person, $20 cash only, ID required, no exceptions.  We had no idea how long the wait would be, nor how exactly the lottery was going to work.  The line stretched from the front of the El Rey on Wilshire Blvd., where they were selling the tickets, down and around the block to 6th Street, which runs parallel to Wilshire.  Not bad, actually; we had expected a much, much longer line.  

“Let’s just wait an hour and see if the line starts moving”.  We were willing to wait a little while, but not waste a whole day, fuhgawdsakes.  We soon settled in and began chatting with our line-mates.  It turned out that we were in the presence of Uber-Fans:  these people not only knew where the Stones had been practicing all week, they’d actually gone down to the rehearsal space and hung out, listening through the walls.  One of them got Mick’s autograph as he left the parking lot.  There is apparently a whole Stones Fandom Underworld of which we were not aware until that day.
 
After about two hours, an announcement was made:  They were going to hand out the lottery tickets, one per person.  It was surprisingly low-tech.  A woman and her assistant came by with a bucket full of small blue paper tickets – the kind you get in a raffle, and handed them out to each person.  People clamored for more information: “when will you call the numbers”? What happens next?”  but they only said that more information would be forthcoming.  More waiting.  

The lottery system isn’t a bad way to go in this type of situation – it’s fair in a way because it’s random, but unfair for those who got in line super-early.  One woman even flew in from Osaka, Japan!  It’s also unfair in that there was a great possibility that only one person in a couple would get tickets.  We decided between us that whoever got in was going to go, no whining and complaining from the other party.  

About an hour later, a man with a bullhorn came slowly down the line, preceded by rumors and repetitions of the golden ticket number.  I should point out here that the raffle tickets were mixed up – so when they handed them out to each person, they weren’t in numerical order.  So Thee Perfesser and I ended up with tickets that were 150 digits apart or so, even though we were standing next to each other in line.  We had hoped against hope that we’d both either get in or not, but of course, that was not to be: When they called the numbers, it was everything above 312259.  He was in; I was not.
 
At first, I was okay with that.  Of course, I’d love to see the Stones.  Live.  In a small venue.  But, we have things to do.  And there would still be people there taller than me, and I’d have to jockey for a place to stand, and I probably wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway.  That’s fine.  I’m glad he got in.  

Another guy who had been standing near us began to get desperate.  He offered to buy Thee Perfesser’s ticket.  He explained that his wife couldn’t be there because of a work obligation, but that she was the real fan, and he would do anything to get her a ticket.  Thee Perfesser politely declined, but the Desperate Husband pressed on.  Thee Perfesser said, “okay, name your price”.  They guy offered $100.  No dice.  He begged.  “Would you sell your ticket to me if I were in your position”? Thee Perfesser posited.  “No, I wouldn’t” the guy confessed.  Point made.  

A bigger issue began to rear its ugly head.  Should Thee Perfersser give me his Golden Ticket?  – he offered, but I declined.  I asked him if he would take my ticket if I had won and I offered it to him – and he said no.  It was like the fuckin’ Gift of the Magi.  

The line began to move, and the lucky golden ticket holders made their way toward The Chocolate Factory.  I followed along, not wanting to lose sight of Thee Perfesser and to see what was going to happen next.  As we got closer to the front of the theater, the winners were funneled through metal barricades, and each ticket was scrutinized and compared to a number scrawled on a crumpled yellow post-it held up by The Gatekeeper.  Eventually, Thee Perfesser was through and he disappeared into the cool shade of the lobby.   I was fine with it.  I really was.  

My heart sank.  It was quickly dawning on me that I really, really wanted to go to this show.  

Our only communication now was the occasional text.  “Going to start processing soon” was the next text I saw, and then, “It’s going to be a little while”.  Meanwhile, the rest of us poor suckers waited outside in the hot sun, searching for shade that was near enough to the theater doors so that we could get back in line, should any more tickets appear.  There had been a rumor that more tickets might be released once the first wave was processed.  I only half-believed it, but I stuck around, mainly because I wasn’t going to strand my beloved, alone and on crutches, in a crowd of rabid fans.  That, and also, I wanted in.  A dark cloud had formed over my head.
  
After another eternity (but in reality only about a half-hour) there was another unintelligible announcement, and then a rush toward the door – people began cramming back in line, and from my vantage point (the shade of the bus stop kiosk in front of the venue) I saw that they were letting people through, those that had stuck around hoping for a second wave.  This was it.  I started walking the length of the new line but quickly realized that I would never get in if I went to the back. One thing I’ve always been good at is making myself invisible – that’s the advantage to being a small and often quiet person, and that day I used it to  cram myself into the tightly packed 2nd-wave line.   I figured that if I were 100% honest I would never win.  So I cut in line.  Much to my surprise, nobody said a word.  Everyone knew the game.  

Minutes later, I was streaming past the ticket-taker and I, too was in the cool shade of the lobby.  I couldn’t believe my luck, and I didn’t allow myself to really believe it until I actually had a ticket in hand.  It felt like I was a new immigrant just setting foot on Ellis Island, the realization of my good fortune bubbling up inside me.  The line inside snaked around a series of ropes like an amusement park ride, and I craned my neck around to see if I could find Thee Perfesser.  Another series of short texts, and I located him up near the front.  I was finally in!!!  

In the meantime, I settled into conversation with the two young women in front of me.  They were younger than me by at least 20 years, but professed their love for classic rock and excitement at finally seeing the Stones in concert.  One of them mentioned that she would be going to the upcoming Fleetwood Mac show as well.  We chatted excitedly as our proximity to the ticket table shortened.  I felt lighter and happier as we made our way toward the front, but I suppressed my urge to jump up and down and scream, mostly because I didn’t want to let myself believe that I was going to this show until I actually had the tickets in hand.  There were people in line who were letting loose – one guy was glibly shoving fries into his mouth while doing the happy dance – and I enjoyed their celebration as if it were my own.  

“What time is it now? How long have we been waiting?” we kept asking each other.  It had only been 45 minutes inside the venue, but it felt much, much longer.  One of the Gatekeepers got on stage and welcomed the newcomers into the theater, entreating the first wavers to welcome the second wavers with a cheer.  A big applause went up, and then she  announced the rules: One ticket per person, must have I.D., must keep the wrist band on, must have corresponding ticket, names will be written on tickets and wristbands, no tampering, cash only, no cameras allowed into the show, including cell phones.  Rulesy is as rulesy does.  There was an El Rey employee whose only job was to make sure that nobody sat in the chairs that were enticingly lined up against the walls.  We were tired.  We had been waiting in line for hours, and there was more waiting to be done.  But we had somehow descended into the category of lesser-than, and we were all willing to follow the rules and accept our status as Lucky Bastards, but in exchange we gave up many of our civil rights, like the right to sit down.  Funny how these things work, that we accepted this as the price to pay for a great privilege.  

Inch by red-carpeted inch I eventually made it to the ticket table, where a row of young women sat.  It was all very old-school and analogue: one had a cash box, one had a sharpie and a list, another had a stack of tickets and a sharpie, and finally the wristband.  They took your cash and ID first.  Then wrote your name on a list.  Then wrote your name on the wristband and a ticket.  Then put the wristband on your right wrist with the admonishment not to get it wet or tamper with it in any way.  (Shit, I had been planning on taking a shower.) Then they gave you a little flyer with all the rules.  Again.  And finally, they had a lovely lass with an English accent taking pictures of the lucky winners for the Rolling Stones website.  I was actually going to see the Rolling Stones! At long last, I let the wave of excitement wash over me.  This Jaded Girl  hadn’t been that giddy and excited about a show in a long, long time.  

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Posted on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 under Heroes, Sounds | 10 comments »

The rise of Basquiat

by Bryan Waterman

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So I came across these gorgeous Tseng Kwong Chi photos of Basquiat, Warhol, and Haring the other day and they just rubbed a little salt in my wound of having missed the big Basquiat blockbuster at Gagosian this spring. In case you missed it too, here’s the rather staid official gallery walk-through followed by funnier one of art blogger James Kalm getting himself kicked out of the gallery for filming with a spy-cam:


It’s been interesting to read reviews and press — and simply to take in the numbers of people this thing attracted: 1,000+ on weekdays and 4,000+ on the weekends. Sotheby’s posted a little reevaluation of the artist’s “rise” just about the time the show closed. It’s interesting to see how the biography continues to shift as time passes. Now Mary Boone’s pretty sure he was bipolar, for instance:

Boone remembers a shy, sensitive young man. The perception of Basquiat as a “wild child in an expensive suit” is off base – though Boone does admit that he dropped $10,000 at Armani so that he would look sharp for his opening. “This guy was not stupid,” she says. “He knew exactly what he was doing. His paintings weren’t accidents.”

The first memory that comes to Boone, however, is a day in 1984 when one of her most prized artists announced his defection, and Basquiat comforted her. “Julian Schnabel had just left the gallery and I was crying in my office, and Jean-Michel comes in and puts his arm around me and says, ‘Mary, don’t cry,’” she says. “And he said something like, ‘I’m a much better artist than Julian.’” Then, in a gesture aimed to cheer her up while making fun of a cliché about blacks, he went out and bought her a watermelon.

Nearly 30 years later, Basquiat’s beguiling combination of boyish charm and utter cockiness still puts a smile on Boone’s face. She recounts his fondness for pink champagne and his habit of burying his telephone in the laundry basket; when she needed to speak to him, she’d send a hand-written note, “Please call me.” His untimely death still haunts her. In retrospect, Boone says she believes he may have been bipolar and, like others with that psychiatric disorder, turned to illegal drugs in an attempt to self-medicate. She also says she has come to view her own role in her artists’ lives differently: “Now I no longer think my responsibility is just to make money for my artists. If I see them going in a bad direction, 
I say something.”

Earlier people just thought he was difficult, arrogant, and/or damaged. Exploiting and exploited. Turned into a jerk by money and fame. Ground up and spit out. One thing’s clear, though, and that’s the consensus for his canonization. And the fact that auction prices will continue to go up, up, up.

So I’m curious to know who among you got to see the show? And what you thought?

It may be worth pointing out that Tamra Davis’s Radiant Child (2010) is available in full on Netflix or YouTube. A fun companion piece to the Schnabel, which is worth revisiting if you haven’t seen it lately.

Posted on Monday, May 6, 2013 under Art | 2 comments »

How I learned to stop worrying and love the run

by Farrell Fawcett

Jesus, I can’t believe that’s the title of this post. Love the run? Seriously? Cause I fucking hated running. My whole life. Totally hated running. I thought runners were kind of bonkers. (I’m sorry lovely darling runners out there, I know I’m a total judgey asshole.) But I thought people who ran a lot, like miles and miles, especially marathons, I thought they were kind of a tiny bit self-deluded and masochistic. Mainly because every time I tried to run more than a mile I found myself thinking only these kinds of obsessive thoughts: “When is this going to end? I’m so bored. This is so painful. And boring. I can’t think about anything else but when this is going to be over. How can anyone like doing this? So bored. Lungs hurt. I’d rather be smoking a cigarette.”

Then a couple years ago like an idiot I quit smoking. And then even more idiotically a year ago I started running. It was an attempt to get healthy. It was a bit of a stupid old-chestnut of a tired cliche of an eye-rolling Western stereotype: Get yourself divorced, discover health, start running. I did it. And shit, stupidly, I started to like it. Not right at first. I kind of just kept using that treadmill through the cold wintery months, trying to run away, far, fast, just trample all of those shitty emotions. Then suddenly it’s kind of warm outside. And I’m running on trails. Running on trails! Trails! The way it used to be.

I grew up in New Mexico. Up in the Albuquerque foothills. I ran a lot of trails. My brother and I used to scamper around all those boulders and cactus and yucca looking for lizards and horned-toads and snakes and stuff. One awesome day we finally discovered that awesome secret place where the Kinghorn brothers kept their pornos hidden under those boards under the that circle of boulders. Holy shit. Don’t tell Mom and Dad! Ever! Seriously! I’ll punch you in the dick! And suddenly running up those steep slippery sweaty hills was so much more interesting. And suddenly I’m running outdoors again on trails, except this time in the Pennsylvania woods, and it’s so fucking fun. Even though there’s no pornos to run to. (Or maybe I’m still running for some grown-up version of porno? Sex? Really? Yes? No. No. Seriously. It’s really different this time. I think.)

And suddenly I love running. Seriously, it feels really good. Especially on trails where you have to pick your footing really strategically while you’re hopping logs and racing down stony ravines. It requires special concentration. And balance. Anticipating what could go wrong. Split-second refinements. Like snowboarding or skateboarding. Or heavy-petting. It’s physically thrilling. There’s risk involved. Wait, it is sexy! And on those days when I don’t get to run a few miles, like when I’m waiting out an injury or traveling or it’s raining, I get pretty bummed. I just want to be out there. And then suddenly a few months ago, I’m all “Why don’t I just run one of those races that my ex is always running?” And shit, I’m suddenly a part of a team running my first race ever.

It’s this Philadelphia tradition called the Broad Street Race. It’s only ten miles. And it’s straight down mother-fucking Broad Street and right past our mother-fucking house. And you run through these crazy eco-systems of economics and class. And people apparently line the street and yell encouragements and high-five you. Somewhere up in the ghetto, small bands of horn-playing African Americans come out and serenade the runners. It sounds fucking adorable. I can’t wait. It’s this Sunday. I’m gonna fucking crush it. If I don’t shit my self with joy. And if my left knee holds out. And Trixie and Gottlock are part of the team. How delightful. Oh, and we’re running for a good cause. The Gottlocks’ son had infantile seizures (now resolved!). So we’re raising money too. Lordy, it’s just too much beauty.

I’ve been playing a lot of music too. In fact, I think that music has a lot to do with how much I like running. In fact, I’m not sure I’d enjoy the running torture much at all without cool songs playing. So maybe I’m still not a totally converted runner. But whatever, I don’t really care. It just feels so good running with music on. I’ve decided to share some of the great songs I’ve been listening to these last couple months. The first mix is all new stuff. And it’s a really visceral kick-ass mix. The second is full of old little gems that make for great running. Stupid stuff like the Rentals, Money Mark, GBV, Beulah, Bran Van, Throwing Muses, Apples in Stereo, and other awesome nostalgic indie pop. Running has made me filter music in a whole new different way. Besides craving old indie classics, I found myself suddenly more tolerant of big thumpy high-energy remixes of recent pop songs — but I’m still severely discriminating. So there are only a few of those on here. You may not like these mixes at all if you don’t run. But I doubt that. Cause they’re full of cool songs. So download these mixes if you happen to like music. Or the sensation of pleasure. Or of elation. And of feeling cool. Cause you will.

So wish me luck. And here, for your entertainment is a little 13 second video of yours-truly running a trail in New Mexico last week. (It was a bit windy, so the audio’s super annoying. Turn it down.) But life’s pretty fucking great. Come run with me someday. I’ll be gentle. And we can still enjoy a drink and a smoke later that night. Running’s kinda helped me come back around to all the delightful things in life. Judge away. I’m a runner now. But I still live well. Expansively well. Come join me lovelies!

Oh, and I thought it would be sweet to know if you racers out there had any special advice or song/s you always play during your race, something you’d like to tell me about. I’d love to hear it and include it on my player. Or a race day superstition? Please share!

PS. The first song on the mix is called “Runner.” And another’s called “Speed.” And “No.1 Against the Rush.” Get it? By the time the first mix ends, if I timed it right, I should be crossing the finish line. Woohoo! Triumphant instagram photo to follow!

Posted on Thursday, May 2, 2013 under Body, Conflict, Health, Sex, Sounds | 9 comments »