B Michael Tumblr is the personal weblog of B Michael Payne.
I have never been the type of person who remembers athletes’ numbers. I know Josh Allens’ because he’s ubiquitous around here. Jordan, Lebron, etc. I had forgotten that Ken Griffey Jr.’s number was 24 until I saw this hat, which I shortly thereafter bought. Obviously, everything’s too expensive these days. 2026 is the year I am not buying myself anything…
It started with The Pitt , of course. A real TV show, made in real TV show proportions, made on a real TV show schedule. While I was waiting for a new episode to ‘air’ on HBO Max, or right after finishing one, I turned on the ER pilot episode. It immediately blew me away. Its feature film length also made me stop halfway through, and I never finished it. The pilot was based on a…
Do you wanna fuck? Like you know I do? — “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” I’ve started doing this thing that feels a little unsafe but is edifying. My phone, on a mount in my car, is perfectly in my eyeline to the road, and on my phone when I’m driving I usually have the Music app open with the lyrics on display. Driving a lot, this practice has helped me learn (and, more…
Convoy S21E MAO white 21700 flashlight 2026, for a variety of reasons, is/was finally the year I would buy nothing.1 Well, I failed on about January 3rd, although this purchase kind of straddles essential and inessential. I have other flashlights, though none quite like this. And it’s replacing my previous Convoy S21 that stopped working for mysterious reasons. As penance for buying…
Maybe I’ll get started on that. Are people using this thing?
@bmichael on twitter (@bmichael@mastodon.social) : I’m on mastodon now, like everyone (?) else
I wrote this rambly, good for nobody other than me diary-type post the other day. And wouldn’t you know it, I forgot to include the main thing I had found most interesting, something resembling a public-facing question. So, ofc. we had lived in New York (Astoria, then Kensington) for about ten years (me slightly less, J slightly more). Over that time, I feel like we changed, like, 0%. I mean, of…
My boss talks frequently about seasons, but I think more like sports seasons rather than time/weather seasons. He will talk about seasons in re: things like projects at work, ebbs and flow, people joining and leaving the company. I used to find it a little trite and business-speak-y empty headed nonsense stuff, even though, if I thought about it with a bit more empathy it’s just another way to…
Is this thing on
2020-10-14 1 mile, 10:45 pace ::Sets down beige folding chair, turns hat backward, sits down chairback against chest, like a teacher about to get real with you:: Pain is a funny thing. Mine is the most important thing in the world. Yours might cause mine to increase. Or mine causes yours. In my personal experience, this seems to be the case, at least. How do people share pain? When they experience…
13.1 miles at 10:28 per mile. 2020-10-12 Yesterday was Columbindigenous Peoples’ Day. It was also the first day off I’ve had in honestly I can’t remember when. Well, actually, I kind of can. I was very sick, and Luna and my partner were in New York, and I lay on the couch all day. I watched Good Time on Netflix and dozed. The movie was great, the day sucked. I spent yesterday similarly, but it was…
2020-10-06 3.28 miles, 10:32 pace First of all, running in fall is the best. It’s not soggy like spring, which makes me think of running in wet socks. It’s not as ballscold as winter, which makes me think of running in cold, wet socks. And it’s obviously not like running in summer, which makes me think of running in sweaty, wet socks. Fall is the ideal time to run (in the…
2020-09-28 2.09 miles, 11:26 pace Wow, so tired. Put Luna to bed around 730pm and went for a run afterward catching up on NFL podcasts. I put on my headlamp and a neon yellow tanktop. I even wore my Hokas (even though I suspect they’re making my legs more tired than my Skechers GoRuns or Adidas Bostons, which are my usual shoes) because they have more reflective parts. I’m deathly…
Trying something new. Writing in the app. Did a slow five miles yesterday. Listened to the excellent You’re Wrong About podcast. Learned a lot about the Duke lacrosse rape case and Amy Fisher. Basically, the criminal justice system and the media are both evil-adjacent and incompetent. Today (Sunday) I’ve got some knee pain and sore legs. My Garmin said to rest 51 hours (lol) yesterday,…
2020-09-25 1.01 miles, 10:58 pace Day 45 of the run streak. Such a cursed number. Just a perfunctory single mile in between meetings. It should almost go without saying that I couldn’t really run streak without WFH. So that’s possibly a single good thing about all this shit. I listened to the Bill Simmons podcast today. It’s an unusual hate-listen type thing for me. I genuinely…
2020-09-24 2 miles, 8:10 pace According to SmashRun, this was my fastest 2-mile run in a year. This was by design. It marks day day 44 of a semi-planned 81-day running streak. My current longest run streak is 80 days (for the around the world thing). 81 beats it, and it’s also sort of a Kobe thing I guess. (Kobe scored a career high of 81 points against the Raptors in 2006 .) Obviously there…
The Strokes Live AT $2 Dollar Bill [Full Concert] Great nostalgia watch. Were The Strokes ever better?
You need something extra after you drag yourself out of bed at 450am in a polar vortex to go to the gym long before sunrise. So I was honestly delighted this morning to see a new Chuck Klosterman - Bill Simmons podcast posted. I’ve had an up-and-down relationship to reading and listening to these two. Growing up, I was a sponge for their ideas, then as a more mature person I outright rejected and…
markrichardson : If you were reading music blogs in late 2008 you remember that people were getting pretty worked up about the upcoming Animal Collective album. A song or two trickled out; someone hacked Geologist’s email and sent a note to a blog asking that the record be leaked; the one or two print reviews that had already appeared were rapturous. It was a combination of “This record might be…
A somewhat modest writing goal I have for this year is to listen to an album from the Miles Davis Complete Columbia Recordings box set and write something about it. I plan on going in chronological order. Where it’s a live recording made in one year but released in another, I’ll go by the live recording date. Ex.: 1958 Miles was recorded in 1958 but released in 1974. That’s a pretty easy one.…