I almost forgot to mention, I ran the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge again last week. I ran it last year, too.

Previously, I ran it in 30:45 and was pretty much unable to walk 2 days later. This year, I trained up for a few weeks ahead of time and did the full 5K (3.5 miles) in 28:00 flat, with no walking and no crippling soreness or knee problems. All around, I’m happy with my performance. My friend Sarah suggested I go for a 10K next. Well, probably not, but I’m going to keep running regularly now, so who knows?

Here’s a map of the route. We ran the loop of Park Dr. South to 102nd St to Park Dr. North to Terrace Dr.

Doing a bit of website attic clean-up here, so this will be brief: Alisa and I saw The Threepenny Opera at Studio 54 back in June. It starred Alan Cumming, Nellie McKay, and Jim Dale, and featured Cyndi Lauper. It was a hell of a show. It had teeth, humor, and a strong message delivered through gritted teeth.

My mind immediately leapt to this image upon seeing Bush’s paler, more vacant face. Please feel free to extend the metaphor, I just don’t have the time right now.

I’ve been too busy recently to regularly post to Current Config, and I’ve got a post on Half-Life 2: Episode 1 that's still cooking, but in the meantime here are three random thoughts I had recently:

Thought 1
In a conversation yesterday with my man Steve, he told me a story about a friend of his who ordered a grape Icee, and was then informed that the flavor was, in fact, not ‘grape’, but simply ‘purple’. We talked about how great that is and how beautifully self-contained the concept is, etc. Then it occurred to me that we, as a society, have constructed a set of fruit archetypes, or maximally-charactered fruit-flavor types, that have informed our concept of what various fruits should taste like, in parallel to their actual flavor characteristics.

As a society, we’ve kind of encapsulated this concept in our candies, sodas, and artificial fruit beverages. For example, if someone tells us that we can choose between cherry, grape, and orange popsicles, we pretty much know what to expect. We’ve actually created a widely-accepted alternate concept of how cherry ‘should’ taste. But the odd part is that we also know how cherries actually taste. This is the key distinction: we ask for cherry soda that tastes like cherry or we ask for a pie with actual fruit in it that tastes like cherries. You never get ‘cherries’ Skittles or ‘strawberries’ Starburst*. You get ‘cherry’ or ‘strawberry’. Therein lies the distinction. ‘Cherry’ is the Group-Think Over-Flavor and ‘cherries’ is the flavor of, well, actual cherries.

I imagine a group of future cultural anthropologists or culinary historians gathering at the Smithsonian in 3006 to discuss the possible reasons why strawberries no longer have the vibrant, sweet flavors remembered in the original recipe for Skittles. Possible explanations given would be pollution, ozone depletion, exposure to dirt and insects, cultural decay. Theories would abound to explain and memorialize the lost ‘true’ flavors of fruits, now only captured in the astounding gastronomic wizardry of Hi-C and Fruit by the Foot (notice we still haven’t adopted the metric system).

Thought 2
Rye Bread is a bad loaf. Rye bread is the sucker punch of breads. Now, I’m no bread pansy. I eat an organic wheat loaf with seeds in it. This is the kind of bread made from smaller loaves that fell to it in battle. My wheat bread makes off-road sandwiches. None of that velvety-soft pillow-bread from Wonder Bread for us. But man, I’m tellin’ you, rye bread is some bad loaf. I just don’t get it.

Thought 3
‘Evenflow’ is a great name for a medication to relieve monthly bloating and cramps associated with menstruation. I even totally know what song to use in the ads.

*By the way, Mac OS X knows how to spell Skittles but not Starburst. Does this seem wrong to you, too?