yogurt vs gasoline

several days ago, at my good blogmate's suggestion, we attended a bicycle film festival at columbia college (which basically meant every tattooed bike messenger in the city drinking pbr in cans and hollering at the screen). there was a funny short film by the above title in which a guy on a road bike raced his brother on a motorcycle in getting across the city. you can predict what happens - guy on road bike coasts merrily down a bike path, while motorcyclist gets stuck in all kinds of traffic, and road biker wins by a lot. but it was cute - every time they showed the road biker, ice-cream-guy-style music would play, the weather looked a little nicer, people were waving; every time they showed the motorcyclist the music got angrier, people were honking, etc.

i've thought about this little short several times in the days since then. first of all, it's definitely inspired me to ride my bike more often, and i've tried riding to work a few times (mb does it all the time since he works downtown, but it's an 8-mile ride to the south side for me). it's a fun ride, especially when the gay games was being held all over the city and i got to ride past the men's water polo team hovering outside of the uic pool waiting for results, and the women's softball tournament in washington park. second, with the summer classes i've been taking, i haven't had tons of time for leisurely exercise, so i've been combining my trips to work/class with my exercise by bike-muting. but third, and most importantly, with the summer classes and the bike-muting i haven't had much time or energy left to go shopping, and as a result my credit card bills look fabulous. i couldn't believe how much less i've spent in the past two months! it's hard to drop $100 at target when i'll have to carry the results on my back.

naturally, i can't leave a good thing alone, and conclude that biking leads to a more active and less expensive lifestyle. now that classes are done (and thanks again to ck and my good blogmate for accompanying my rum-drinking celebratory post-exams afternoon yesterday) and i'm up a few modest dollars, it's shopping time.

goodbye, hippie-grad-student-low-consumer lifestyle - he-LLO, sale racks!

b.y.o. lawn chair

it should be no surprise to any of you that i'm frequently guilty of cinematic slumming. the fact that i actually own "bring it on" might tip you off. no big shock, then, that i went to see "step up" the night it opened. (my partner in crime for the evening was sm, my new ally in pop teen culture obsession, who was more than willing to delay watching a few episodes of dark, broody angel.) i won't lie - i thought "step up" was great. good dancing, pretty people, predictable story line, happy ending.

but i'm beginning to wonder how my (lovely, yet) snobby, eccentric, vegetarian euro-parents produced a daughter who loves smash box-office dance films... and apparently tailgaiting.

for those of you who managed to miss all the media fanfare (and the deafening roar of the planes overhead), this weekend was the chicago air and water show, a two day blitz of military planes and skydivers doing crazy dare-devil tricks over lake michigan for a crowd of thousands of beer-drinking, hot-dog eating onlookers. i think my blogmate remains a little bewildered at what all the fuss is about, but both of us have spent enough time getting educated by behemoth state schools to know that any excuse to sit in a folding chair next to the grill eating potato chips and sipping miller light is a good one. so much the better if there are actually exciting things happening in the sky overhead.

you'd think i'd be consistent enough in my love of such mainstream fare as to admit that i'm not really tongue-in-cheek about it anymore, and that i'd not be quite so fickle when it comes to my snob-quotient. as such, you'd think that i would have been friendly to the cute guy who was actually nice enough to flirt with me, and would have surpressed the urge to completely high-brow him, even if i did think he was a 21 year-old ticket scalper (he wasn't).

the inner redneck: never there when you really need it.

back on the bandwagon again

though i'll take a fair amount of slack from my good blogmate (mgbm) about my inability to come through with my trademark (though usually ineffective) flirting after she plunked me down in a room full of cute, smart, sweaty runners, i'd like to point something out. mgbm has always been the one to call me out for my chronic bandwagon-ness, especially when it comes to fashion and sporting events... but suddenly, now that i've hopped onto her particular bandwagon, i've seen surprisingly little of her patented smirk/eyebrow-raise combo.

now that i've abruptly decided that the triathlon is the only thing i've ever wanted to do, and have started biking, and swimming, and even running occasionally (with the concomitant shopping for the massive amounts of gear all these activities require), it's more like a big heave of relief coming from the mgbm/mb cohort. for one thing, we decided a long time ago that what i need is an outdoorsy boy, but mostly the issue is keeping up with the jones'. all of a sudden it seems like everyone i know only ever wants to go running, swimming, or biking, and by a bizarre shift in the tide i actually enjoy running, swimming, and biking.

all this is 1) making me feel pretty good, 2) enabling shopping, 3) enabling eating, and 4) generating good people-watching and good stories.

good people-watching at the bicycle film festival where possibly every punk, tattooed, urban bike warrior in chicago had amassed to drink old style in a can...

and good stories after i went solo to ohio street beach to frolic in my new wetsuit and got glared at by a ridiculous tri-trainer who was taking himself WAY too seriously as he lubed himself up to get into his wet suit, and leered at me angrily in a "what is this ridiculous amateur doing on my beach?" sort of way. not only was mgbm quite sympathetic as i told her this story, but she glorified it, and my unfair persecution to some of our collective tri friends.

peer pressure is awesome.

animist electronics (reprise)

i have mentioned in old blogs that i assign tendencies and preferences to my electronics, much to the dismay of my computer engineer brother. you know, the cd player doesn't skip; it's attention starved and wants to be held. the blender simply enjoys fireworks. etc. at some level i know none of this is true, but with one exception: my mp3 player truly loves me and wants me to be happy.

i noticed this in the winter during the hustle up the hancock, a benefit for the american lung association, when my play mix started with hooverphonic "lung" and some similarly appropriate set of songs for me. during my last few weeks of training for the chicago distance classic half marathon, my playlist has consistently shuffled to bubba sparxxx "ugly" every single time i get to the financial/chicago board of trade area. (let's not start too many accusations about just what bubba sparxxx is doing on my shuffle. or ask me how i feel about the cbot. i didn't pass judgement; my mp3 player did.) one day when i was down by the lake feeling nostalgic for st. lucia, my mp3 player kicked out in sequence something i can appropriately call a "tempo run" without having to do any speedwork, although this might only be appreciated by my blogmate (who drunkenly listened to as much caribbean mtv as i did): don omar "bandoleros," rihanna "pon de replay," panjabi mc "jogi," damian marley (i forget which one), and rupee all in a row. it picks fast songs when i need a pick me up, slower ones when i need a break, and rounded me out today during the race by playing dave matthew's "last stop" at the actual last water stop of the run. lovely.

but i'm sad to report that the playlist is getting a little old. mostly because i blew through it all in one pleasant but blister-filled morning. so i'm soliciting suggestions for new running tunes from a crew that knows more music than i do. all moby, beastie boys, groove armada taken care of. retro welcome, doesn't have to be techno (matisyahu "king without a crown" works just fine), doesn't have to even be good (thanks to the good people at niketown for getting this in my head, arrested development "tennessee" is going on next round). your thoughts?

darwin (award nominee) for president?

we don't generally post anything political on our blog, but this is amazing. i have some questions:

1. a zinc mine?
2. really?
3. a zinc mine?

back to the drawing board

series of exchanges had today during statistics class:

me (to classmate): *something non-committal about stats ta, who i did not tell classmate that i have been considering as a potential set-up for a couple of my friends.*
classmate: "[stats ta] needs a girlfriend."
me: "you know, if i knew that he were single, i'd try to set him up with someone."
classmate (confused): "really? but [stats ta] is a big dork!"
classmate (again, light bulb on): "then again, i guess that's better in some ways. i guess my husband is kind of a dork."
me: [say nothing, try not to agree even though i know her husband, who is bald and wears bowties, and is, in fact, a dork]
classmate: "i guess... hey, didn't you just tell me that your boyfriend does SAS for work? so he's a dork too!"
me (sorry, mb): "yeah, he's cute, but he's kind of a dork."

*enter stats ta and professor. professor makes lame math jokes. stats ta laughs.*
me (to classmate): "mathematicians have no sense of humor."
classmate: [says nothing, engrossed in class, better student than i]

*enter other guy in class i have been vaguely considering as set-up potential for friends.*
me (to guy2): "mathematicians have no sense of humor."
guy2 (laughing at stats jokes): "[stats ta] is the (i kid you not) mac daddy."
me (to self): this place is hopeless.

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from this afternoon i conclude that 1) mathematicians have no sense of humor, and 2) neither do people involved in summer statistics classes.

sorry, girls. i tried, but even if they're single you can't have these guys. i couldn't take it.