​
​Friday Inspiration 509​
​

I think I was vaguely aware of Track Star before my friend Pitt sent me this video, in which Jack Coyne plays songs for MC Serch to quiz Serch on his hip-hop knowledge—but I hadn’t ever watched one. Now I’ve watched a few of them, but I think this one is still my favorite because of the enthusiasm Serch still has for the music and the culture. (video)

​This is a great story about making time to write, and sometimes making desks to write on, and also about stealing—well, maybe not stealing if it’s during down time at the job—time to work on creative stuff, even if it’s not paying your bills, or paying at all. (thanks, Mario)

I don’t know why but during a couple conversations I’ve had with friends in the past few weeks, the question “Is running cool now?” has come up. I am not saying I have a strong opinion one way or another, but it had definitely not occurred to me that it was cool now. (Maybe because I run, and I am not cool?) And then Hilary sent me this essay titled “Running Isn’t Cool,” and I thought it was really interesting, especially this part: “To run is to be seen trying. To be seen sweating and snotting and grunting and wanting. To be vulnerable. A moving testament to humankind’s endless search for meaning through suffering. Running a marathon is thus, by definition, uncool.”

A few weeks ago, I was looking for new José González songs on Apple Music and found a rework of his song Broken Arrows by a group called Portico Quartet, and I immediately put this song on repeat for about 35 minutes. Then I started digging around YouTube to look for more of their stuff, and I found this wonderful video of them performing their Terrain album at Studio One at Abbey Road, and now this is all I want to listen to when I’m working, and I imagine it will be like this for several weeks.

I am excited to be working with the wonderful and hilarious folks at Precision Fuel & Hydration in 2026 and will be cooking up some fun stuff with them in the coming months, not the least of which is their continued sponsorship of this newsletter, and my continued consumption of their products on a weekly basis, my current favorite of which is this big bag of Carb & Electrolyte Drink Mix. Now that the temperatures are dropping a bit here in Missoula, I am running shorter distances and needing a few less carbs and electrolytes, so I’ve been doing one scoop of this mix in each water bottle before I head out on my runs up Mt. Sentinel, and I’ll tell you, it’s just about perfect. If you’d like to check it out, this link will give you 25 percent off your first order (or about $8 off a single bag of this mix).​

We went to see Ross Gay speak at the University of Montana last week, and I don’t know the last time I have been so happy to be in the same room as someone whose art I love. (Actually, that’s a lie, I do know—it was Rakim, on his book tour in 2020, with my friend Syd) I decided a few weeks before Ross came to Missoula to go ahead and read the remaining books he’d written that I hadn’t read yet, all poetry collections and one epic poem about Dr. J. That night on campus, he was exactly who I thought he would be, a true joy, and I would have stuck around to high-five him after and maybe ask him to sign a few books, but we had a babysitter and had a feeling Jay wouldn’t let her put him to bed, so we took off, and I decided I would go ahead and continue being the enthusiastic evangelist for his work that I have been since 2021. So I searched around for an excerpt of one of his books that I thought was perfect, and here’s one about loitering, from the Book of Delights.​

​I thought the best part of this video clip was the clearly offended chef saying, “if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike,” but then I think the show hosts’ reaction of basically choking on the food in their mouths because they’re laughing so hard was the best part, but then the hosts are trying to obscure the mess they’ve just made and trying to hide while also still laughing, and then I started reading the comments and realized this saying has many versions, including “If my grandmother had wheels she would have been a truck,” and I kind of want to adopt this saying for myself now.

This Korean guy became a Detroit Pistons fan basically completely randomly, but then fell in love with the team and gradually became a die-hard fan, and then he saved up a bunch of money to make a trip to Detroit, and then a second trip to Detroit, and I’ll tell you what, Detroit loved this guy right back, and it’s a great story.

--