64 Miles 182.6 lb

Latest Jigsaw Puzzle, Medical Visits, Home Exercise

If you're reading this article after seeing the picture at the top, then you're probably expecting something about the jigsaw puzzle I just finished putting together.  It is a cute picture of five smiling dogs, pretending to be human, outside having a fun picnic, 500 pieces in total.  For days I had the puzzle laid out on a plastic tabletop in the living room, the pieces stubbornly resistant to my eyes and pattern recognition.  I told Melissa of my goal of finishing it this evening, after a discouraging feeling of stagnation in making progress, and she gave me a crucially helpful hint.  So I set about the task and, now you see it!  This happened after coming home from UF Health radiation treatment and a visit with Dr. Koch, my very capable brain surgeon from October 24th.  He encouraged me to be active while listening carefully to my body...very reasonable and wise.  I've also been exercising in the living room, continuing to tally up virtual-equivalent miles, today's total being 9.9 miles.  Today I made use of the YouTube Runner's Digest channel's point-of-view video of the 2024 United Airlines New York City Half-Marathon.  It is inspiring me to check out some more virtual running videos, including some from that young Chinese athlete.  I still want to build up my own running strength and endurance to the point where I feel confident participating in some near-future middle-to long-distance events...   

Unstructured Sunday, Exercise, TV Football

 Today is Sunday, one of those unstructured days that depend on me to stake out a kind of personal schedule.  Still, over this day's span, time seems vast.  Yet it's only inevitable that the afternoon will creep on through, culminating in evening.  I took advantage of the early morning hours to exercise with virtual running in the living room, to a YouTube video of 2024's New York City Half-Marathon.  Later in the day I did a brisk (for me) 3.3-mile walk though my home neighborhood.  My daily mileage total for today came to 9.9 miles.  I followed some NFL football on TV, highlighted by an entertaining contest in Southern California between the Los Angeles Rams and Detroit Lions.  I'd like to see both teams make the postseason playoffs, but I have my doubts about Detroit's prospects this time around in 2025.  Tomorrow it's back to UF Health cancer treatments and doctor consults...with a lab blood draw to top it off...

Did Extensive Zone 1 Living Room Exercises Despite Feelings

This morning Melissa drove me down to get another round of radiation treatment for brain cancer.  The procedure itself worked fine, but I seem to be suffering some inflammatory side effects from it.  The doctor prescribed for me steroids to counter possible headaches, and although I don't like headaches or lightheadedness, I'm going along with it with the best hopes possible.  Later I decided to do Zone One exercises while watching a 2022 NYC Marathon virtual run...recorded and posted on The Manor Runs channel...on YouTube.  I credited myself having covered a virtual distance of 7.4 miles.  Add to that the equivalent of .8 miles in FitBit steps, and the total comes to 8.2 miles.  Doing this doesn't make me fatigued, but after just a few minutes I could happily just lean back on our living room couch and let myself slip into unconciousness.  Tomorrow I'd like to continue the activity and cover more miles.  My hope is that this will better prepare me to more effectively run during Saturday morning Parkrun 5Ks.  

Today's Off-Year Election Raises Concerns

Today, the first Tuesday in November, 2025, is a traditional election day in an off-year sense.  It's not a presidential election year and US Senate and state governor races are held in even-numbered years, not this one.  Yet in many localities, mine included, there was at least one measure on the ballot left to the voters to decide.  The results of the question of returning Gainesville's local utility, GRU, to management by its elected commission, will be revealed in a little while.  Meanwhile, there is the election of New York City's mayor to consider.  Andrew Cuomo, who I think should really be president right now, is struggling to catch up with upstart left wing radical Muslim sympathizer Zohran Mamdani, darling of the current opinion polls.  Mamdani, smug and arrogant, always seems to be wearing one of those smiles that never reaches his eyes: his viciousness creeps me out.  Even Trump, in my opinion the worst failure of a president I have experienced, was right when he endorsed Cuomo over Mamdani. But I expect the latter to be voted in to office as the results pour in.  In any event, I have little faith in my own governor in reaction to the Gainesville referendum: government in America is broken and DeSantis will stonewall the results with his own brand of arrogance.  Now for me it's on to life and living it...I'm off the clock with the elections...

62nd and 23rd

I'm sitting here in that same old Dunkin' store facing the same scene I showed in a recent article.  There's a street sign right there ahead on the corner: NW 23rd ST on top facing in one direction and NW 62nd AVE on the bottom facing the other. Cars come and go, but I don't see pedestrians making any use of the provided sidewalks here.  That's a lot different from the Manhattan, NYC streets I see on my YouTube live feeds at night...click HERE to see an earlier video.  On them the cameraman, with seemingly endless endurance, walks a brisk pace for miles upon miles, up and down Midtown Manhattan streets and avenues...it makes me tired leaning back on my couch watching all the fast-walking people, and they, too, seen to possess boundless energy.  But were I there among them, I probably wouldn't be tiring either, no matter how much real estate I covered.  I've been wearing a FitBit watch for a few years, and when I was working (at the post office) the last couple of years I would almost always be in continuous motion, often deliberately walking when I probably could have just stood or sat still.  I would regularly amass more than 20,000 steps in a workday, and then when I got home as often as not I would do some running-in-place before going off to bed. Now that I am retired, am I unconsciously scaling down my physical activity when I don't have to? And if so, is that a good thing?  On today's neighborhood 3.3-mile walk/run, I originally set out to speed-walk the whole loop, but at the 5-minute mark I switched the project to 5 minutes of walking alternating with 5 of easy running...and it worked! Beforehand I had thought that running would be a little too rough, but I discovered that I could get into a nice groove for five minutes knowing that I'd be back walking some.  No problem...this is actually a step up from my earlier plan to institute a 6 minutes walking/4 minutes running routine.  So maybe this 5/5 system can get me through long distance races...the first half-marathon is coming in November.  Then in early December it's a 15K, followed in January by a choice I have between a marathon and half-marathon.  Let's see how far I can take this, in the old "postal worker/ big-city walker" spirit...

My Jigsaw Puzzle of Stature of Liberty with Manhattan Background

The above image is yet another jigsaw puzzle I've recently assembled, this one a view of the Statue of Liberty in the Hudson River with Lower Manhattan...highlighted by the New World Trade Center skyscraper in the background.  I've been to New York City only once, back in 2010 with Melissa and Rebecca, and that time was very special to us.  We focused on Manhattan with our visit, staying at the Marriott Marquis hotel on Times Square, touring the whole area and building wonderful memories of the place.  Of course, back then the World Trade Center site was closed off to the public, with construction of the new building just in its fledgling stages.  If you go back on this blog to April of 2010 you'll find a few articles and photos pertaining to that four-day stay.  Some time in the future I'd like to go back, but then again there are also other places I'm looking forward to seeing in person...

Quote of the Week...from Peter on YouTube

 All right, here we go...very last corral of the very last wave.  Let's see how this ends up going, shall we?

                                          ---Peter, on his YouTube channel titled The Manor Runs

I don't know Peter's last name, only that he has a small YouTube channel about his running experiences.  By far the most impressive posting is Peter's recording of his entire six-hour-plus-long experience running the 2022 New York City Marathon: all 26.2 miles through the city's five boroughs.  I've grown to consider it as the best of many available virtual NYC Marathon YouTube videos because he doesn't get hung up on how fast he's running or whether somebody (or himself) takes a walking break here and there over the course of the race.  He made the above quote to lead off this lengthy video, in the midst of the crowd standing around just before the race's start in Staten Island.  The "wave" mentioned in it refers to the divisions of runners (more than 50,000 total) into staggered starting times, and "corral" refers to the expected finishing times of the runners (Peter was in the slowest corral). His words are applicable not just to marathons, but to any endeavor in which it's mandatory to get out of one's comfort zone and into a bit of a stressful situation that holds no set promise for its outcome.  Peter's marathon was pretty slow, and was definitely a bold move on his part.  His finishing time was a couple of minutes slower than my 2011 Ocala Marathon result...back then I slowly walked the final seven miles with a painful, strained IT band below my knee.  Dealing with stress is not so much a matter of eliminating it, but rather determining how we react to it.  Self-improvement podcaster Rob Dial, on a recent show, divided the three types of stress: eustress ("good" stress), hypostress and hyperstress.  When we bravely do something new that might bring with it fear of failure...especially public failure...that's a healthy stressful situation from which we can grow,,,that's eustress.  Hypostress is that stress produced by lack of stimulation, typified by boredom.  People prone to feeling this type of stress tend to gravitate toward daredevil, risky types of activity like gambling, jumping, climbing, speed activities and the like.  And hyperstress is the type that the word "stress" generally means to most of us, whereby the situation tends to wear one down and cause fear, worry and ultimately can weaken and even harm our bodies over time.  More eustress and a better strategy for dealing with the other two sounds like a formula for a happier, healthier life.  I wonder if Peter ever ran another marathon...his YouTube channel doesn't say.  You can watch his NYC Marathon video by clicking HERE...

Some More About Last Sunday's Marathon

Since I wrote a couple of days ago about my second "official" running marathon experience, I realized there were a few extra items I thought merited mention.  One is the relatively involved amount of preparation during the days preceding the event.  This includes tapering down of running mileage and intensity, along with a stepped-up consumption of carbohydrates.  The latter is supposed to fill up the body's glycogen stores that normally would be depleted long before the end of this grueling 26.2 mile race.  So I did just that, easing up a bit on my training and stuffing myself with high-carb food.  I also conformed to the advice that I drink a lot of water, prehydrating myself for the expected race-day loss of such.  As it turned out I probably didn't need to prehydrate so much since I hardly even perspired the entire five-plus hours and actually had to take four different porta-potty breaks in the middle of the race.  But I should have ingested more electrolytes and stretch my legs more and better.  That may have largely contributed to my leg cramping issues during the final three miles, as well as during the first two hours following the marathon's completion.  I look forward to correcting these oversights for any possible future races...

During the run...four repeated out-and-backs on a 3.27 mile stretched of paved trail in the woods...I  imagined NYC marathon locations at different mileages on this largely undifferentiated run.  Also, I watched an old YouTube video that someone made going up and down the Hawthorne Trail and picked out a few landmarks to look for on the race course.  The Winnepeg YouTube running brothers, on their NYC Marathon video, scorned anyone they saw walking, because they seemed to entertain the misconception that this wasn't an acceptable option.  I, on the other hand, am an enthusiastic advocate and practitioner of the Jeff Galloway method of tackling long distances by alternating a set number of running minutes with one of walking.  Then again, I thought those two dudes were a little bit two much on the "alpha-male" dominance/pecking order side of the human psyche, reminding me a bit of some old overly competitive high school classmates that were totally into themselves and how superior they were to others (and me).  Still, they did give some good advice in parts of their video...

Right after I finished this marathon, I thought that this is too crazy...I'll never do another marathon again.  But the next day I was already figuring how I could tweak things to achieve a better outcome, both in terms of a faster time and in how I can withstand the stresses that this length of race...especially its ending...puts on my body.  But in the next two months I will be undergoing medical tests and, most likely, procedures that could well put an end to my running this season...or maybe not, I just don't know.  But there's other stuff I can do in the meantime if that happens...

NYC Marathon Open to Slow Finishers, Unlike Gainesville-Area Marathons

The New York City Marathon took place the Sunday before last, and I enjoyed watching ongoing television coverage.  Although there was a channel devoted to showing the top elite competition at the front, there were also several YouTube live feeds at different parts of the running course, depicting what was going on from the sidelines.  The most compelling of these, which I watched in the early evening toward the event's end, showed 59th Street in Midtown Manhattan on the southern rim of Central Park, just one mile from the 26.2-mile race's finish line.  There, exhausted and sometimes limping entrants mostly walked past the exhorting, shouting dude behind the camera as their impending finishing times crept higher and higher toward the seven-hour mark.  This scenario...at least the part allowing the race's stragglers to finish without closing the course because of an imposed time deadline...made the NYC Marathon an open race.  We used to have a couple of those in the marathon distance here in north central Florida, but sadly, no more.  Let me explain...

My only "official" marathon...although I had run a practice one the week before in four hours and twenty-three minutes...was the Ocala Marathon of January 23, 2011.  Regrettably, I sustained an IT band injury which hobbled me in the second half of the race, forcing me to walk slowly for its final seven miles. My time?  Six hours and four minutes.  I had also intended back then to run the next month's scheduled Gainesville Five Points of Life Marathon, but my need to recover cancelled that and I then resolved to stick to half-marathons as my longest racing distance.  But lately I've been thinking it would be nice to have another go, if only for just one time, at a marathon-distance event.  But both the Ocala and Five Points of Life marathons are no more, and the only other races of this distance in my area have very restrictive time limits.  The biggest of these, the Florida Track Club's Mary Andrews Marathon next January, sets just five hours as its limit...even with good training and without any injuries, at my age (67) I would be hard-pressed to get a sub-five hour finishing time. So, although I sympathize with the race organizers who don't want to hang around waiting for someone to finally get to the finish line after seven or eight hours, I do think that since they are charging a hefty fee to enter the race in the first place then they should be more flexible with the allotted time and at least extend the limit to a more reasonable six hours.  That is, if they're really interested in popularizing and growing the sport and not just stuck-up elitists.  I think all public races, even the two extinct ones I extolled, have limits on finishing times. But since they're public, they should take that public in mind and avoid oppressively short limits on finishing times.  Sadly, at least in my area, the opposite is happening...

Some Comments After the NYC Marathon

I watched some of the day's events at the New York City Marathon yesterday...most of it was through live feeds on YouTube with cameras strategically placed at various points in the race.  I enjoyed the coverage of the leaders...Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia and Hellen Obiri of Kenya won the men's and women's events respectively.  I also dug seeing runners of different degrees of training and speed at places like south Brooklyn (Bay Ridge), north Brooklyn (Williamsburg), and one spot on the southern edge of Central Park on 59th Street, just a mile from the finishing line.  That last viewing I saw of the runners taking three times as long (or more) than the race's winners...they were pooped and most of them were walking.  The guy behind the camera kept yelling out for them to "bring it on home", "you did all the work" and "get your medal"...I wonder how long he was standing there doing that over and over again.  As for me, I'm happy to witness the madness from afar, content as of now with more sedate (and shorter) racing experiences with fewer accompanying hassles.  Tola and Obiri are obviously top-notch athletes...for most of those in this marathon, that clearly wasn't true.  Yet being an athlete per se is more a state of mind than an objective truth...I consider myself to be one, in fact.  There are people who never would run in any public race and only run for their own personal self-fulfillment or exercise to maintain health.  Although these are good motives and I run for those reasons as well, I feel that there's a little more to it all in my case.  I'm looking forward to what the future brings and congratulate those runners and walkers who tackled that difficult course in the Big Apple yesterday...

NYC Marathon Taking Place Today

Of all the marathons that I have NOT run...and the now-extinct Ocala Marathon is the only one I have...it's the New York City Marathon, held on the first weekend in November, that captures my imagination the most.  On YouTube I've been able to get a runner's-eye-view of the race on three very different videos: one from 2019 features a Chinese-speaking entrant who is relatively fast and the other two are from last year, one filmed by Alex, who has made numerous other race videos in the area and ran an average (for me) race and the other by a novice who ended up walking much of the distance.  In all three I got a great sense of the geography of the city's five boroughs, in this order of the race: Staten Island (at the beginning), Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Bronx, and then Manhattan again at the end.  If these three videos showed all there was to running the NYC Marathon, I'd say "Sign me up and stick me on a plane."  But after viewing other videos of the event, it seems most of the effort goes not into actually running it, but rather first getting approved to enter it over all the other aspirants through either their February lottery or by joining with a charity and generating a lot of money.  Also, since we're talking more than 50,000 runners clogging the streets of New York, every time anything is considered, be it making hotel or restaurant reservations, picking up bibs at the required exposition at the Jacob Javits Center, checking in a post-race bag in Central Park, just getting to the starting line (no subway access to Staten Island) and going through the security check there after which there are hours of standing around before the race actually starts, we're talking endless lines and waits...ugh!  Yet those who speak of this event think it's a great thing and keep wanting to return next year.  I think that if I could escape somehow all that extraneous tedious b.s. and just start it like in all those racing videos, I'd think it worthwhile as well.  But if someday I do run a big-city marathon or, more likely, a half-marathon, then it will probably be in another place.  I wrote about it this morning because right now that same New York City Marathon is ongoing, to last throughout the day as they have staggered the massive number of runners into five waves and subdivided them further. It's a bit cooler there and windier than last year's race...a lot of the runners also seem to underestimate the fluctuations in altitude throughout this not-so-flat city: NYC does have some badass hills as well as a lot of extended upward and downward sloping!  I think a TV channel is covering the event, but most likely it will focus on the top finishers.  Funny that for someone as enthusiastic about running as myself that I am so clueless about the top athletes in this sport...

A Good YouTube Video of Recent Staten Island Half Marathon

Over the past year I have become a pretty avid viewer of YouTube, a video platform run by Google (the same company that backs this blog).  Among the many kinds of videos I like to watch are the virtual runs...the YouTube channel Runners Digest contains some of the best, with Treadmill Trainer also providing good material.  These videos tend to be designed with treadmill running in mind, with the user pretending to be in an actual race while training at home or the gym.  For me, I watch the videos at home while jogging around the house...no treadmill necessary.  On this past October 8th, Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City (and the starting point for the NYC Marathon), held a half marathon there.  One of the entrants has a history of filming these types of races in the New York area from the perspective of a runner, and this video, posted on the Runners Digest channel, shows how much he has progressed in developing his video-making skills.  Along with the usual screen of how a developing race looks to a runner in it, he also put at the top a sort of virtual "rear view mirror" showing how it appears looking back.  And there are ongoing stats presented in the corner of the screen.  Although on these sorts of race videos I prefer to just hear the actual sounds of the event, this one...like many others I've experienced...has pretty background music to accompany it instead: I can handle that, though.  My only "experience" of Staten Island is with the NYC Marathon videos I've seen of it: in these there's just a large "herding" area for the tens of thousands of runners and then they're suddenly on a steep, long bridge out of there, leading to Brooklyn where much of the event takes place.  In this race I just saw, though, you get to see a lot more of this interesting part of New York...click HERE to view it like I did... 

Working Out at Home Watching YouTube NYC Half-Marathon

My morning workout today consisted of me running around through the house...trying in the process to avoid tripping over our puppy dog Daisy...while watching a YouTube video of a New York City half-marathon, recorded by the same Chinese-speaking dude who recorded the full NYC Marathon back in 2019.  I went to the computer to see the race's course map, and quickly noted that it didn't conform at all to what I was watching.  The map had it starting in Manhattan and going to Brooklyn while "my" race had a reverse course...they're now toward the end, running right down Broadway past Times Square where Melissa, Rebecca and I visited (and stayed at the Marriott Marquis) back in 2010.  And then I discovered that within New York City and the nearby area there are several marathons/half-marathons each year.  Awesome, if you're a resident you can sign up for the ones you like and the subway system and shuttles can circumvent any transportation issues.  But, of course, if you're like me and live more than a thousand miles away, then it gets quite a bit trickier.  I wonder how many of those running in "today's" race flew or drove in from more distant locales and how many were already planted in the immediate region.  Sometime in the future I'd like to have a go at a New York City race...but the external issues of getting there and getting a place to stay while fitting it all on my calendar seem to be, at least at this stage of time, pretty daunting.  And I already know that, for some of the races, they're booked up many months in advance.  Until I figure it all out, though, I'll keep watching videos like this one, thanks to the thoughtful people who make them...

Three NYC Marathon Full Videos on YouTube

I noticed that YouTube has full-length marathon runs, taken from a runner's vantage point.  I focused on the New York City Marathon and three videos from it, based on three widely different finishing times. (click on each of the following to watch them...I don't know how long they'll be up): (1) 3 hours 13 minutes, (2) 4 hours 46 minutes, and (3) 6 hours 6 minutes  The New York City Marathon is on the first Sunday in November and takes entrants through all five boroughs, starting with Staten Island and passing through Brooklyn (for a long time), Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and then Manhattan again before ending in the southwestern corner of Central Park.  The first (and fastest) video was taken in 2019 by a Chinese-speaking runner with plenty of friends to chat with along the course of the race...that was pretty cool.  In this video most everyone (but not all) were relatively young and clearly in good shape with similar strides and running styles.  The second and third videos were from this past November's race and, to me are the most interesting because they represent approximations of where I was twelve years ago...let me explain.  By the time 2011 rolled around, I was 54 and seriously training for an attempt at a marathon, for the first time in my life.  A couple of times in the previous weeks I had surmounted 20 miles in neighborhood training runs but soon thereafter would hit that fabled "runner's wall" when the energy level would suddenly plummet.  Then, on January 15, 2011, I pulled it off: a 26.6 mile run in 4 hours 23 minutes.  I thought then that I was more than ready for a go at the Ocala Marathon scheduled for Sunday the 23rd...but I developed an IT-band injury near my knee that manifested in the form of pain after about ten miles of running.  I rested myself to get better before the actual race and was fine for the first ten miles again...and then the pain began to reappear and intensify to the point where, until reaching Mile 19, I alternated brief painful runs with walks, which were painless as long as I didn't run.  But for the last 7 miles of the race I had to walk...and slowly at that.  It was a big blow to me because not only would my finishing time be lousy, but I would have to spend weeks healing, meaning that I wouldn't be able to run in Gainesville's Five Points of Life Marathon the following month.  I hobbled over the finishing line at 6 hours 4 minutes...with hardly a soul there to greet me...and after being unceremoniously instructed to get on the sidewalk because traffic was being opened up again.  This experience was totally different in the NYC marathon where boisterous crowds shouted encouragement and congratulations to even the slowest of runners as they approached the end. I enjoyed how the three videos kept showing, naturally, the same landmarks that the runners (and walkers) passed by...kind of reminded me of the movie Groundhog Day as "I" kept running past the 7/11 on 4th and 89th in Brooklyn, down the pretty stretch on Lafayette Avenue with all its trees and crossing the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge from Queens to Manhattan.  If you sometimes run in your own home as I do, watching marathon videos like this is a fun way to at least pretend you're part of the action...but I hear it can be pretty hard getting into some of the more popular marathons since so many apply for them...  

Enjoyed First Round Tennis from U.S. Open on ESPN

It was fun watching the action in the first round of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, held in Flushing Meadow, New York City and broadcast on ESPN and ESPN2.  Although last year's spotlighted players Novak Djokovic and Ashleigh Barty were unavailable, the former being banned from entering the country because of his refusal to be vaccinated for Covid and the latter having retired earlier in the year, I was able to see some familiar faces play, including of course Serena Williams as she made her grand reappearance in a Grand Slam event after a long gap from injury and recovery.  Williams, for whom I was rooting, surprised me by her play and defeated her first-round opponent, Danka Kovonić, in straight sets...still, I was taken aback at the excessive hype and crowd bias and felt a bit sorry for Danka being shoved into the background: she worked hard to get there, too.  Stefanos Tsitsipas, a very talented and high-ranked but annoying player with his court antics, was upset in the first round as was Simona Halep.  Top-seeded Daniil Medvedev advanced easily in his match...although to me it seems too grueling for the men to have to win three sets to advance while the women need only win two.  Leylah Fernandez got in her first-round match and won...she made it to the Open finals last year against Emma Raducanu, the defending champ, who has yet to play.  I also watched Nick Kyrgios advance...he's interesting with his emotional playing: maybe I'll follow him in the tournament instead of absent Novak, who last year had been trying for a Grand Slam sweep.  And Rafael Nadal, returning after an abdominal tear forced him to withdraw from Wimbledon in July, has yet to play as well.  Plus, there are many, many more players at this stage and I'm sure I'll get to know some "new" players.  The crowd is always interesting, too...sometimes I think the folks in the stands are more interesting than the players on the court.  I'm going to miss a lot of the tournament this year as I'll be at work more this time around but will catch up later on in the night...

Just Watched the Movie Hamilton

Hamilton is a 2020 movie of the same-titled Broadway musical, filmed at its Richard Rogers Theatre on 46th Street in Midtown Manhattan, just a block or so from where I stayed at the Marriott Marquis while visiting with my family in 2010.  At that time we saw the Broadway production of South Pacific at the Lincoln Center...today it was Melissa, Will and I sitting in our living room watching my second Broadway play on our television screen, thanks to Disney Plus which carried it in their listings.  The first few minutes quickly knocked me off my feet with the diverse cast and fast-paced rap, music and action...at first I had to ask if this show was about the same Alexander Hamilton I knew from studying American history.  An immigrant from the Caribbean West Indies, Hamilton was a patriot during the American Revolutionary War and served under General George Washington, a role which would later lead to his appointment as the first president's Secretary of the Treasury.  Along the way he got to know others like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Aaron Burr...the Broadway play makes his relationship with Burr much more extensive than it apparently was in real life.  Those at all familiar with the real Hamilton know of the tragic end of his life, but I felt the show did an admirable job of presenting it and the aftermath...well, the ending was a real tearjerker!  It's a pretty long film at 2 hours and 40 minutes, so plan in advance some free time to watch it.  I felt that the music was incredible, and may be the first time ever that I had experienced rap on such a high artistic level...amazing.  Later on I read up on Hamilton and found the the Broadway play, which debuted in 2015 and won numerous awards, was not only coproduced by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who portrayed Alexander Hamilton, but he also wrote it and composed its music and lyrics: what an incredible, daunting accomplishment!  All of the acting was fantastic, but I especially appreciated that of Leslie Odom, Jr. as Aaron Burr.  If you're interested in history, then I would suggest this movie as a point of departure and not the final word on what really transpired.  I would rather have been there in person to see Hamilton performed live on stage, but still feel very privileged to have been able to experience this beautiful work of art even if only at home on a wide flat-screen TV.  Why not try it out for yourself?

Just Finished Reading The City by Dean Koontz

The City is a 2014 novel written by Dean Koontz, more known for horror/suspense stories dominated by deranged killers.  Although suspense abounds here as well, along with the presence of murderous villains, this book deals more with the life of its protagonist, Jonah Kirk, a 9-10 year- old black boy growing up in New York City...specifically Manhattan...during 1966-67 when protests against the Vietnam War abounded and bombs started going off. Told from the vantage point of Jonah as a 57-year-old he recounts how he discovered he had a musical talent for playing piano and picking up tunes from just hearing them...he's taken after his grandfather Teddy, a renowned player in his own right.  And Jonah's mother (his father abandoned the two) completes the family's musical bent as a talented singer.  Add to the mix Mister Yoshioka, a neighbor with sad memories of himself and his family in a World War II Japanese internment camp, Malcolm, a talented horn player about Jonah's age living across the street, and Malcom's pretty and wise older sister Amalia, and Jonah seems to have a pretty good life...except that this IS a Dean Koontz novel and you just know a lot is going to go down.  Aside from fears that Jonah's father will kidnap him, a mysterious woman Pearl, calling herself "The Spirit of the City", has warned Jonah through his dreams about a couple of vicious criminals...he inadvertently reveals his presence to them and is consequently a target, along with his family and friends.  What are the bad guys up to...at least we know Jonah will survive intact up to the present.  But do we really know that...after all, this IS a Dean Koontz novel.  I enjoyed The City as a welcome departure in tone from other books by Koontz and appreciated the author placing in relationship characters of different races and ethnicities across multiple generations, showing through many of them a vision of how people should get along with one another.  It's also a story of good vs. evil and Koontz, like his contemporary Stephen King, is a bit of a moralist with his writing...but also like King isn't overbearing about it.  And I loved all the popular music references, too. Two thumbs up from me for The City...

The Recent "We Love NYC" Concert in Central Park

Saturday evening there was a big, open concert...open for those vaccinated against Covid, that is...in Central Park, New York.  Dubbed the "We Love NYC" concert, CNN for weeks touted it extensively, even toward the end showing an ongoing countdown to its beginning.  I get how it formed: New York City for weeks in the spring of 2020 was the pandemic's epicenter in America, and now that it seemed to be winding down, this mega-concert was intended to put some closure to it all, a "victory lap" of sorts.  Only problem was the Delta variant sweeping through the country, causing once again ICU beds to fill up...this time almost exclusively with patients refusing the readily-available and effective Covid vaccine.  So in essence this concert was a celebration of the vaccinated, but not of the disease's decline.  As the days approached the concert it also became apparent that a tropical storm, Henri, was going to threaten the region and cause bands of heavy storms to sweep through the area.  Yet New York City mayor Bill de Blasio insisted the concert go on at the scheduled time.  The result: halfway through the evening, a strong storm swept through the area sending the thousands of live spectators to flee for cover, with the remaining performers put in a state of limbo after mixed signals of the concert only being delayed a couple of hours, and those at CNN...which was broadcasting it all live...to struggle to fill in the empty air time.  But the storm did not relent and the concert was cancelled, leaving scheduled acts like Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Paul Simon and the Killers off the stage.  No, I didn't watch the first half of the concert, but from what I've read about it, everybody seemed to be having a good time.  Until the storm struck, that is.  Well, maybe this was Mother Nature's way of saying, "Don't declare victory until the game is over!"...

Game of the Week: Cash Cab

 

Cash Cab is a TV game show, currently shown on Bravo, originally aired on the Discovery Channel.  The host, Ben Bailey, drives his taxi through the streets of New York...usually Manhattan...just like any other cab until the passengers step in and then the lights start flashing above and recognition dawns upon them: the game is on!  Each destination is different, of course, but the rules are the same.  It's a trivia game and the passengers have three strikes (missed answers) before they are ejected from the cab.  Each correctly answered question awards them more cash and if they get to the end still in the game, Ben gives them the chance to go double-or-nothing with a final video quiz.  They can also call someone on their cell for help or do street-side or social media "shout-outs".  Having visited Manhattan in 2010, I enjoy the different routes and street photography showing the throng and surrounding buildings.  I also like the fact that although the contestants tend to be tourists or residents, they don't have to pass auditions to get in on the action as is the case with other game shows.  Cash Cab isn't always filmed in New York, but the overwhelming majority of episodes are.  Ben Bailey is a great host and I admire that fact that he can deftly pilot his taxi through heavy New York traffic without missing a beat with his questions and the guests.  And if you want to see diversity with the contestants on many different levels, you won't do any better than this series...