Chamblee54

0911 – Canned Entertainment Product the 911 edition of the path journal, is now available. … The walk today happened before the heat set in. I went out Thursday night, drank a cup of coffee, ate a big mac, and stayed up past midnight. This is a wild night for me. When my feet felt dizzy early on today, I realized that there might be some payback. Fortunately, the dizziness never got worse, and I finished 43 minutes without too much drama.
The audio content today was How Did Tom Freston Turn MTV Into a Cultural Revolution? on Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin. Thomas E. Freston has a lot of stories to tell, some of which are true. TEF talked to the right people at the right time, and helped create MTV.
I saw some pioneer MTV. In early 1982, I shared an apartment with three people, five snakes, a cat, and a ferret. MTV was on the rent-by-the-week tv a lot. One of the humans was a Journey fan, who would scream “turn it up” every time one of their videos came on.
TEF: “They gave me all this research one weekend to read. It divided America into three categories of toilet paper users. Rollers, folders, and crumplers. And all this analytic stuff about the cycle was crazy. And of course, we’re going after the crumplers because they use the most. They use the most, and they go more often. And those people live in cities. I’m thinking my neighbors in this building are probably all crumplers.” … TEF: “We had the worst dressed group of people going in and out of any Manhattan office building you could imagine. People saying, “What’s going on?” No suits. No suits. The only dress code rule we had was no frontal nudity.”
TEF: “The idea that we would be experimental is not something you would see at a broadcast network. In fairness to them, they had a big legacy business and they couldn’t just operate sort of like we did, off-the-cuff and improvise so much. Because they had to keep their business growing year by year. If they had things that work they had to continue to build on those, and very strategically build another one. So they were a lot more deliberate. I’d say we had more of a Bebop culture and they were more like a classical orchestra.”
0912-0828 – The walk today was strange. I did 12 minutes, and may do more later. It was raining. My rain gear was inadequate. I was listening to She Killed the Man Who Almost Killed Her: The Jema Heffernan Story, Part 2 on Gone South. I was getting into the story, when the phone switched to a man talking about woodworking. I don’t know if it was the phone, or the earbuds, but I couldn’t look at it right away because I was holding an umbrella. In a synchronistic turn, a similar mishap occurred September 12, 2024. In those days, 3 laps on the “outdoor treadmill” was a good workout.
0912-1746 – Later in the day, the sun turned the morning rain into humidity. I did 42 minutes on the path, with nuisance level dizziness on early laps. The podcast was Introducing Death of an Artist Season 3: Petra Mathers and Her Michael. These two artists in Astoria OR decide to commit suicide at the same time. I made an effort to listen to the entire show … thank satan for the ability to fast-forward through commercials. At the end, I found out there was a series devoted to Petra Mathers.
I found a piece of trash on the path, and decided to go put it in the school dumpster. I found a wooden meter stick while I was there. It was 39.37” long, with 100 centimeters marked off. A meter stick is a cool thing to have, and almost completely useless.
0913-1005 – The walk today did not take place in a church. I did 39:00, with minimal foot dizziness. The entertainment today was Queen: Will the Real Freddie Mercury Please Stand Up? on Disgraceland. The line between fantasy and reality is intentionally blurry. This was especially true for Queen, who started one of their hits by saying “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.”
0914-1038 – The walk today was detergent. I did laundry today, and after I got through hanging it out to dry the heat was kicking in. I managed to finish 36 minutes with no dizziness. The show today was Episode 323: The Social Justice Mayor Vs The Social Justice Non-Profit on Blocked and Reported.
Jesse and Katie were reading comments about a problematic bar in Massachusetts. “Read this> … Other Yankee yak from Hampshire College. Played a gig there and got 100% racially profiled by a lesbian who looked like the Twinkie from Sausage Park. … I don’t know what that is, but I like it … because Sausage Party was, I believe, a Seth Rogan vehicle involving Pixar style animation of the contents of a fridge.”
0915-0901 – The walk today was the early bird getting the worm. I did 44 minutes, with no foot problems. The entertainment was EP:61 The Terror Wars Rage On on Darryl Cooper & Scott Horton – Provoked. The Bibi wars have always been discouraging. I only want to hear about them so much.
0916-0941 – The walk today was neo military. Instead of walking on the path, I walked up to The 57th Fighter Group, a neighborhood landmark. I walked back through the Ashford Forest Preserve. My score was 2.41 miles in 1:23:18, with no foot dizziness.
There were 3 shows today. The first was David Crosby: The Folk Singer Who Became an FBI Fugitive on Disgraceland. David Van Cortlandt Crosby was one of the wildest rock and roll animals. Unfortunately, the show was a bit disappointing. It covered some hairy stories, most of which I had heard before. The show finishes as DVCC is going to prison. I have written about DVCC. 102909 082114 080215 101115 012023 010226
The second show was How I “Failed” at OnlyFans on Death, Sex & Money. It kicked in while I was in the parking lot at The 57th, near a magnolia tree fighting kudzu. The show was about “Anna Blake.” She had a difficult childhood, and started an onlyfans account to get a step ahead. The show was not very interesting. I left when DSM was starting one of their notorious seven minute commercial breaks.
“So you’re thinking about starting an OF. Don’t. You will fail. I’ve had an OF for almost five years now. I’m pushing 30 and very much still broke. Please listen to me. I’m a mattress actress and a part of my job is commodifying my sexuality.” … Commodify is a strange word. Is commodify pronounced kuh-MOD-uh-fahy, to make something a commodity? Or is commodify kuh-MOWD-uh-fahy, where you make something a commode? With commercial sexuality, both meanings could apply.
The third show wasTristan Harris on the Anthropic Whistleblower, Elon Musk, and Avoiding AI Catastrophe on Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. The topic was the ethics of AI, which might be an oxymoron. Several things were explained in a way I had never heard before.
TH: “The large language models which basically was learning to treat everything as a language.” … SF: “You’ve also described AI as basically like taking steroids if the steroids gave you organ failure. TH: “Yeah, this is an important metaphor.”
TH: “The cancer drugs don’t prevent the biological weapons, but the biological weapons can undermine the world that can sustain and reproduce the cancer drugs.” SF: “You often say that you can’t separate the promise from the peril of AI. What does that mean?” TH: “Well, a lot of people they hear all this and they’re just like, “Okay, why can’t we just not do the bad AI? Let’s just do the good AI and just focus on that.” But the promise and the peril are inextricably linked.”
0917-0942 The walk today was fabulous. The weather was cooler, I walked for 50:06 with no foot dizziness. The first podcast was The Four Mrs Wilsons: The Spy Thriller Author with a Real Life to Match on Chameleon. It got boring after a couple of laps, and I switched to Vicki Lawrence on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan. This show was so much fun. The former Vicki Ann Axelrad has stories about working with Carol Burnett, who always stopped working at 3 pm so she could have dinner at home with her kids. … VL “Doing the show was so much fun. I mean, we really never I don’t remember ever having a stressful day. … We just had a good time cuz that’s what Carol was about. … I really think it really does trickle down from the top. However that person behaves, that’s the way the company runs. … Harvey used to tell me all the time, this doesn’t happen in real showbiz, Vic.”
For more information about my walking problem, please see The Path Journal. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in September 1937. Children of Olaf Fugelberg waiting for dinner. Williams County, North Dakota.
©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah