Fine, my retired  running trainers are called The Champions.

Go listen to Best Coast.

Great scene.

An OIL TANKER.

From what's left of the twisted metal sub-frame flames twenty feet high scorch the night, like the maw of hell on earth.

James stares, transfixed by the burning... the imprint of some insurgent's plan.

His face hardens now in a way we haven't seen before, and as the fire flickers on his features he seems lost in a privatre war of his own.

The insurgents are out there somewhere.

Ahab and the Whale

The best script I've read this year

I've read a lot of scripts and a couple of plays over the past two months. Since I'm taking a sabbatical from prose and non-fiction and spending a year just reading scripts (10 months to go!)

I have about twenty pages to go in the best script I've read this year* and it is a pretty great film by James Mangold. Copland. Go read it.

This is saying a lot, because I have read some fantastic scripts this year:

Sunshine
Thank You for Smoking
Michael Clayton
Goodfellas
American Beauty

and a couple of great plays:
Farragut North
The Farnsworth Invention



When I read scripts, I am benefitting from it. I have several books on how to write screenplays, barely got through Syd Field and I never read the rest.

Thank fully I have plenty of scripts to get me through the next ten months. Including China Town, Taxi Driver, Batman Begins, Memento, Out of Sight and loads more. Plus lots of plays by Pinter, Mamet, Mcdonagh and a Sorkin.


On a side note, since I have started working at my job, three people have left my department (granted one of them I replaced) but that says a lot about where I work. Everybody hates it here, except the people who will die here.


*best script I've read this year so far.

Isaac and Ishmael

Quite possibly my favourite one hour done in one episode ever. It is the season 3 premiere of The West Wing.

A few things about it. It was made in two weeks. Two weeks following the September 11th terrorist attacks and was a counter-attack to the people baying for bloody revenge, and also wasn't. As a single episode of a show, it introduces all the characters as if for the first time.

There is an A story and a B story. There are very few sets, and they oppose one another. One that is trying to make sense and differentiate a religion versus extremism and another trying to quickly find whether a staff member of the white house is a terrorist by linking relgion and terrorism together.

There is resolution. People come to their senses. The guy who aggressively tries to dins out if the staff member is a muslin returns and basically says he over reacted. People did over react or did they. Catastrophic tragedies have huge backlashes, somewhere to drive their  sometimes misjudged or uncontrolled emotions.

It doesn't spend much money. You could only see that episode and never see the rest of the show. Just track it down and watch it.

The Barefoot Revolution

I've probably already mentioned this, but I wrote a one hour single drama for tv based on the book Born To Run about ultradistance runners searching for some sort of distillation of what makes humans natural runners.

Some creatures are in capable of it, some can but can't last long. The thing which makes us different to our competitors in the animal kingdom is our sweat glands, we don't overheat and so forth.

So this post is about death and rebirth. The death of my Saucony Pro Grids, ones that I bought in 2008 and proceeded to murder up until a few weeks ago, where we finished an 8 mile race, which would retire my former pristine white trainers that had devolved not just in colour, but in it's sole. Slowly my running has worn it down over the course of these years, where I have accumulated at least 700 miles in them. A smart person, would've bought a new pair of trainers after a year, but I wanted to keep wearing them until the day whilst running they crumbled off and it was just my feet padding the ground instead of my former protective shell, breaking out of the cocoon.

That weird fantasy did not come to pass, but upon the end of my 8 mile race, I was exhausted, out of breath, injured and all I wanted to do was take off my trainers hold them above my head and walk around in respect to them, much to the bewilderment of the crowds. But I just hobbled back to the car. I took one week off from all training, and then one week off from running.

My Grids and I have been through an evolutionary phase in my running. I used to be a heel striker, I used to get injured more often, with shin splints usually being the main culprit. Then my dad said I had to read a book called Born To Run: The Rise of Ultra'running and the Super-athlete Tribe. I got through it in that summer, it was about an adventure of these runners trying to find a legendary Mexican Indian running tribe intercut with research and brief interviews about the evolution of the running shoe and how it has become overcomplicated and heavy. I slowly started changing my running strides and I was a part convert to the book. It all made a lot of sense, but I was not going to throw away my Grids, I can't throw things out that fast. We were going to see things through.


I wrote a spec of it for class at University, it must have been the first forty page script I had ever written. I still feel guilty for my friends taking part in my readthroug, that was a slog. 


Fast forward to today, I knew I wanted new running trainers, I'd cut the laces off my Grids, like it was an ubilical cord. I went out searching for the mystical pair of trainers that would fit all my needs. The theories that the book was pushing is still very much a sub-culture and there are a few minimal/barefoot running shoes from different companies. I wanted something different to my Grids, I didn't know what but all the regular running trainers felt too heavy and looked more like an 18 wheeler truck. Like a kid with their drivers license trying out the most expensive car, I tried out some barefoot trainers.


Minimus, I had to go through three pairs before I got the perfect fit. They are more like gloves than shoes in the way they have to fit. I tried them out of the treadmill, it was like running as a gazelle. It felt good, I bought them.




Now, the thing about changing from regular running trainers to barefoot/minimal shoes is that it takes time for your body to get used to the new way of running, because they are as light as a feather and make you land on your forefoot because there is hardly any cushioning.

It should be faster for me, because I destroyed so much of the cushioning on my grids that I was basically do a not far off version. I can't stand modern trainers in the way that they bounce when you run, it feels like I'm on the moon, not running.

So yeah, I did a two mile run earlier, I sprinted, I jogged, I ran uphill, I ran downhill, I ran on the road, I ran on the mud, I ran on the grass, I ran on stones, I ran slow, I ran fast. I tried them out throughly. 

It is tough, but a new journey in my running.

I mourn the loss of my Grids

I welcome my Minimus' 


I don't know why I get attached my running shoes. It is pretty weird, but at least I don't give them names.

Previously on...

I ran in an 8 mile race, did amazing for the first 6.5 miles and then tore my adductor (inner groin muscle) and forced myself to sprint and stop the rest of the route. I finished in 1:10, faster than my try two years ago on the route, where I didn't tear my adductor by ten-fifteen minutes.

I saw Springsteen in Manchester yesterday, it was okay, the acoustics sucked. Stopped my uncle from getting in a fight and had a free burger.

Update

My new notebook commenced idea absorbing a few days ago. Vol. 4 has begun. I have new ideas, I'm working towards them at a snails pace, because I have to play Max Payne 3 again.