Listen and Weep

In an earlier post I mentioned a podcast I made a guest appearance in – Read It and Weep. Considering the fact that I was on it, I had listened to relatively few actual podcasts done by them. Then yesterday morning I had the genius idea of downloading a few and taking them on my 20 mile run with me – because it goes without saying that I run out of things to think about when I run for more than 3 hours at a time. Things like podcasts are great because not only does it fill the time that I’m not thinking during, but it inspires new thoughts that I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. The human brain is a magical thing when appropriately stimulated by things like podcasts.

In discussing Read It and Weep, I feel like I need to somehow involve a sandwich. The boys on the show always do a compliment sandwich, where they say something good, talk a bunch of shit, and then say one more good thing. I guess it’s because they want to talk smack on all these crappy books but are secretly worried that the authors will one day listen in and they want them to know that they at least had one good thing to say. I don’t really have that many bad things to say about it though, so I’m going to go with an insult sandwich instead.

Insult 1: I was trying to pick podcasts to listen to that discussed things that I had heard/watched before, but there were very few of those. This could be interpreted as a problem on my end, because I very seldom read anything anymore, and usually can’t be bothered to go out and see movies… but instead I prefer to place the blame on not-me. I ended up going with the podcasts about L.A. Candy, because it was their newest one, and Confessions of a Shopaholic and Cougartown, because I’ve seen both of those in at least some capacity.

I’ve never really explored the world of podcasts, but this one is great because it’s made by people I know and like. It was like Alex, Ezra, and Chris had decided to come on my run with me and have long conversations about terrible books and movies, but completely ignore anything I tried to contribute. Even though they refused to acknowledge any of my comments, it really did take my mind off of things like how long the run was taking and staring at the quarter mile markers the whole way.

Sidebar with Read It and Weep boys: I’m running a marathon on June 5. How would you all like to come out and be my support crew/comedic relief during the run? Specifically, I want you to come and run the whole thing along side me and do a podcast in person; I think my marathon will go a lot better if this happens. In high school we always complained about how the cheerleaders only did football and never came out to cheer for the cross-country kids. Don’t be like my high school’s cheerleaders.

The podcasts were generally entertaining, and I even LOLed a few times on the trail, but my favorite parts were obviously the times that they would reference things that hit a personal note with me, such as:

• Philosophy. Not like philosophical ideas being discussed, just vague references to it or key philosophical figures in general. The Read It and Weep boys and I all majored in philosophy, and they seem just about as connected to it these days as I am. I recall shout-outs to both Descartes and Kant, along with some discussion of nobody understanding them. Well, nobody understands Kant. Everybody understands Descartes, that shit is simple. Maybe. I don’t really remember – the main point here is that when they say something about philosophy, in my head I say “omg I majored in that!” Being able to say things like that is important to me.
• Massage. The problem with waiting until the day after to write about these things is that I really don’t remember a lot of what I wanted to say. So all I can tell you is that there was some reference to massage, I think foot massage, and in my head I said “omg I do that!” Like I said, this podcast stimulated so many thoughts that I never would have had otherwise. I also liked the idea of “this little piggy” being the happy ending to a foot massage, mostly because I hear a lot of happy ending jokes and most of them are painfully unoriginal. Way to go, boys.

These guys are also really into talking about analogies. They like to say an analogy, and then discuss the quality of it in respect to either the analogy in itself, or to the object/situation that something is being analogous to. I always appreciate that they take the time to go to the next level, rather than just stating an analogy and moving on.

I think I had a lot of other things to say about the pod-cast, but the only thing I remember is that they did an interview with a real life cougar-hunter, which was exciting. So I guess this brings me to the other side of my insult sandwich:

Insult 2: I listened to three episodes, which lasted me for approximately the entire first half of the run. During the time that I listened, I had to poop on the side of the trail twice (even after taking a bunch of Immodium). I had to poop on the side of the trail zero times during the part of the run that I wasn’t listening to the podcast. Obviously what we can conclude from this is that Read It and Weep makes me poop when I run.

Miles run this week: 25
Miles run in 2010: 316