The Travels and Rants Journal

Happy new year.

From a walk in the woods. A frozen milkweed.

1. Presented as a follow-up to our previous shoe-throwing post, we present Sock and Awe. It’s harder than it looks.

2. My groovy niece.

1. An early Christmas gif, from me to you, via Boing Boing: Animated shoe-throwing gifs. I especially liked the three stooges one. And the Bush-as-Neo one ain’t bad either.

2. And while we’re on shoe insluts, also from Boing Boing: Send your old shoes to the Bush Presidential Library. I had the idea that it would be funny for everyone to show up at the White House before Obama’s inauguration and throw our shoes over the fence at Dubya, but we’d prolly just get sent to Gitmo.

3. How I love Bon Iver. Watch “Skinny Love” on Letterman. (via cvilleMUSE)

4.Do you ever fear dying in some bizzare kind of freak accident? Did the idea of dying from a flying port-a-john ever cross your mind? It almost happened to Wistar Watts Murray.

5. And while we’re on places to poop: A cat chasing its leash around a toilet. (via stuffonmycat.com)

6. Last:

1. Check out the video for Helen of Troy from the Findells.

2. And now… A cat pencil sharpener that meows when you stick a pencil in its butt.

3. If I were a cat, and I saw this picture, I would have nightmares for a week. (stuffonmycat.com)

4. Took some really nice new photos this weekend. This being one of them.

Went out the other night to see the latest edition of the Charlottesville folkie all-stars, playing at a benefit concert for the Waldorf School. Writer and cool cat Browning Porter opened the show (with Jeff Romano accompanying), but most of the evening was taken up by Devon Sproule, Paul Curreri, Danny Schmidt, and Jan Smith trading the stage back and forth. Jan writes really nice and thoughful songs, and I enjoy her shows, but Paul, Devon and Danny were the stars, and are, for my money, as good as it gets anywhere. I’d stack either of them up against anyone anywhere any time. The only drag about this show was that you didn’t get nearly enough of any one of them.

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Picture.

1. I ran the very fun Bear Creek Ten Miler yesterday. It’s a crazy fun trail race at Bear Creek Lake State Park, which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, a little over an hour away from here. It had snowed a bit overnight, making the drive down at sunrise an amazing sight - I only wished I didn’t have somewhere to be - I wanted to stop every five minutes and take photos. And the trail itself was equally beautiful - not enough snow to really make the trail treacherous, but just enough to cover the woods with magic.

And trail runners are funny people. Normal humans would be unhappy at the idea of trudging through ten miles of slick and sloppy trails in the freezing cold. But trail runners live for the idea of a good story to tell - we were in even better spirits than usual - everyone was buzzing around the start line like giddy eight year olds at christmas.

My time was pretty slow but it was a good way to spend a cold winter Sunday morning.

2. Tenuous.

1. Went out last night to see the Steve Keene show at Second Street Gallery. Good stuff. The gallery was packed. I (like everyone who attended, and everyone in the greater Charlottesville universe) now own a Steve Keene. Ten bucks. Deal.

2. Watched Shopgirl again the other night. Sobbed. I need to update the top ten movie list.

3. Who you lookin’ at?