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An Interview with Rio Jazz Singer Carol Saboya

Jazz and samba have shared a rich interactive history for the last half-century. In Rio de Janeiro, musicians took note of Chet Baker, Bill Evans, and composers like Cole Porter while jazz musicians in Los Angeles and New York absorbed the music of Black Orpheus and bossa nova innovators Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto.

Pianist/composer Antonio Adolfo was one of those young Rio players in the 1960s who found himself captivated by these new sounds, both at home and abroad. On his new CD Lá e Cá (Here and There), Adolfo juxtaposes his own compositions and three of Jobim's with jazz and American Songbook classics to create a gorgeous showcase for this alluring musical synthesis and for Adolfo's self-described obsession with Brazilian phrasing. His vocalist daughter Carol Saboya is featured on five tracks -- one in Portuguese (Sabiá) and the others in English (All the Things You Are, A Night in Tunisia, Time After Time, So in Love).

Lá e Cá picks up where father and daughter left off with their critically acclaimed 2007 CD, Antonio Adolfo and Carol Saboya Ao Vivo/Live. "I love performing with Carol," says Adolfo. "She's very jazz-oriented, the type of singer musicians like to play with."

In addition to his prolific work as a pianist, composer, and arranger, Adolfo, 63, continues to be a leader in music education. The Centro Musical Antonio Adolfo in Rio and a new experimental Brazilian music school in Hollywood, Florida, where he resides, are a big part of his current professional life.

Saboya, 35, also teaches at the Centro, in Rio, and maintains her own recording career, which began with an appearance on Sergio Mendes's Grammy-winning Brasileiro (1992). Carol's CDs include the Sharp Prêmio award-winning Dança da Voz; and Janelas Abertas, a session with guitarist Nelson Faria, as well as Sessão Passatempo, Presente, and the recent Chão Aberto, all released in Brazil. Her Bossa Nova and Nova Bossa were made for JVC Japan.

I interviewed Carol recently for a forthcoming article on MSN.com on women at the forefront of indie Brazilian music. As a jazz singer myself, I was eager to showcase someone like Carol, whose clear, supple soprano (aptly described as "elfin" in the liner notes) enchanted me on my review copy of Lá e Cá. Though only a snippet of the interview made it into the article, I wanted to share our full conversation here:

Can you describe your father’s concept of Brazilian phrasing?

He can explain it better, but what he means is that the way we talk, the way we walk has so much to do with the way we do music. It has to do with being Carioca, being Brazilian. We have this relaxing way of talking, and this is in the music of Jobim, Caetano Veloso, Edu Lobo.

This album is not a bossa nova way of playing. There are many rhythms mixed in. For example, have you heard of toada? Toada is a rhythm that’s close to a baião. We do things that people may not know of.

What do you mean when you say it’s not a bossa nova way of playing?

Bossa nova has a Brazilian pop sound of the 50s and 60s. In that era Brazilians found a way to play Brazilian styles such as samba with "sophisticated" harmony, a simplified beat and a soft sound, very much influenced by American artists such as Chet Baker and a few others.

This new release has also some influence from that moment, but with a much more hot jazz influence, showing how songs from the American songbook can sound Brazilian, even carrying that more intense jazz taste. The musicians play in a much more free interpretation way, what gives me inspiration to go deeper into that atmosphere as well.

But around the world, bossa nova is still in demand. Has that influenced your choices?

I have two albums in Japan that are totally bossa nova. They just sort of happened in my career. There was a Japanese producer who wanted a singer with a "smooth voice." They are very typical arrangements. We divided it into two albums, the first called Bossa Nova and the second called Nova Bossa [laughs]. But that made me a career in Japan -- people know me there.

I think foreigners do fixate their Brazilian passion on bossa nova because it is more easy to listen to and at same time very charming and, possibly, more popular. Not so much in the manner jazz musicians love to play. That's why some of these musicians have created what they call samba jazz.

How will you promote the new record with your father?

We want to do a tour starting in Miami, where my father lives, and New York too. We know lots of good musicians in the States. I really want to know what Americans think about the album.

The songs on Lá é Cá were all recorded live in studio in Rio with a great band. Your vocals are flawless! How many takes did you do on vocals?

The band went first and I did a scratch vocal. We did that in three days. Then I did my six songs in the studio. Some of these I already knew very well, like So In Love and Sabia. For others, I had to study the lyrics a little, like Time After Time. Night in Tunisia was a difficult one, very different.

Was it hard to sing jazz?

Well, I love jazz. I lived in Los Angeles when I was a teenager, and listened to a lot of jazz.

How about singing in English?

In one song -- So In Love -- I had to redo a word. I was sure I was correct in my pronunciation, but I said "so 'tount' me" instead of "so taunt me." I had to redo that.

When I was singing in English I wasn’t very worried about singing a perfect accent. It’s more to do it with the right meaning of the words.

The father-daughter combination is unusual and sweet. What is it like working with your father? Do you know of others doing the same thing?

Well, there’s Carlos Lyra and Kay Lyra; she’s a singer too.

It’s very nice to work with dad, but sometimes we fight. I’m a big fan of his work and I respect him a lot, but you know how it is with family. He says, "Let’s go over and over and over this," and I say, "No, that’s enough, it’s ok the way it is."

I already did this work before with him before, when we did the live show recording in 2007, which was the first time in a long time. We were wanting to do something together again.

How often do you perform live, or are you more of a studio singer?

I love live performance, but the situation is very difficult, with the club owners not paying enough, so you almost have to pay to play. I go to the States to do some things with my dad.

My last album was released in 2008, and I did some gigs here and in Sao Paulo. The kind of music that I sing -- it’s not very popular; it plays on some radio stations, but not all of them.

Here the singers who are well known… Have you heard of Ivete Sangalo? She puts on a big show, and does lots of dancing -- that’s not my style. I sing what I know, and try to pass to the people what I’m feeling.

The music industry is very bad -- it’s the same all over the world. People make money doing big shows. People are not releasing CDs any more, many people are just releasing songs online.

Yes, it sounds like you’re describing the Bay Area music economy! It is indeed the same the world over! But how does the music scene in Rio compare to elsewhere in Brazil?

I think Rio is where the scene happens. Everybody comes to Rio -- composers come here for the media. Of course, I love the rhythms from Bahia and the nordeste (northeast). But when they want to be heard, musicians come here to Rio.

The wonderful singer/composer/guitarist Guinga is a dentist by day in Rio. Do you have another career outside of music?

Oh, Guinga is a wonderful person too! My only other career is being a mommy. I have two kids, 8 and 4 years old.

Do you play an instrument?

I play piano. I’m starting to perform for myself at a couple of shows, but I usually like to just sing.

I am the same way! I have played all my life, but I am petrified to perform on piano. I think I had too many traumatic recitals as a child.

My dad never taught me a lot of piano, but I played in school, and when I teach I have to play for the students. I have started to study piano again, and get some lessons.

Tell me a little about your father’s music school in Rio. What vocal technique do you teach?

The school (Antônio Adolfo Musical Center) is 25 years old; I grew up there, and then went to music college. Now I have students that are adults and teenagers.

I teach Brazilian and pop music. I think the basics are the same for every kind of singing. Warming up is the same as for classical singing.

The main branch of the school is in Leblon. We also have one in Barra da Tijuca, and I take care of this branch.

Your voice is so beautiful. As a singer, that’s something I admire, but sometimes it seems like a beautiful voice can be held against you! Has that ever happened to you?

People here, singers, don’t like to study much, and if they do, the journalists will come and say, "She’s so technical, she doesn’t have soul." Of course you should study voice -- singing is like any career that you should train for, but we are a poor country, so we don’t have music in public schools. It’s a cultural thing. In the U.S. I admire how everyone wants to get better.

Now people don’t say this anymore, but yes, it used to happen: "She’s got such good technique, oh, her pitch is so perfect" -- like it was a bad thing!

You might be gratified to know that some have said the same about Ella Fitzgerald. I want to strangle a person if I hear them saying Ella was technically gifted but not expressive!

Ella Fitzgerald is one of my biggest influences in singing, in Portuguese and Brazilian music as well as jazz. It’s so effortless, so beautiful -- and everything she’s singing has a point. I also like Billie Holiday, even though she had such an unusual voice.

With nine albums under your belt, what have you learned as a recording artist?

I think we all improve, we mature, album after album, age after age, you feel more calm. You don’t have to show everything you know, you don’t have to hurry, you just relax. I don’t know if you do this, but when I listen to my first album, I wonder, "Why did I do that? Why was I trying to do so much?"

I always sing the way I feel. If we do things that we really feel, it’s going to be good.

The Oakland Marathon and Running Festival

Sometimes you need a change of perspective. That's what vacation travel is for, or moving, or remodeling. When you can't afford any of those things, there's running.

It was 7:30 am and a thousand runners jostled nervously in downtown Oakland, filling Broadway for a block or two. I looked for familiar faces from my training group but saw no one, so instead I sidled toward the pace group -- 4 hours and 10 minutes goal finish time -- I had decided to run with. An air horn blasted, confetti rained down on us, we all clicked our watches and we pressed forward, slowly jogging through the inflatable orange starting arch. As I often do at the beginning of a race, I felt a surge of emotion and the pressure of tears behind my eyes. It's exciting, being in this pack of weekend warriors and semipro athletes, owning the streets as we take on some distance challenge. This time, nothing less than 26.2 miles -- which required a massive loop around my city.

As you run down the middle of the boulevard, trying to avoid the excessive camber of the road (a fruitless exercise, as it turned out for me), you see everything through new eyes. Storefronts. Quirky houses. Architecture. People. Especially people.

The running festival brought out the best in Oakland. Police officers smiled benevolently and cheered us on. People in bathrobes waved from front porches or presented us with bowls of orange slices, strawberries or muffins.

"Oakland is proud. Oakland loves you," said a tall, dark man from a lonely corner in industrial West Oakland. The diversity was spectacular, not surprisingly. There were the urban alternative artist types from The Crucible, there were the Black Hole Raiders Fans in full face makeup and monster garb, there were A's fans, Hell's Angels astride Harley Davidsons, musicians ranging from smooth R&B to heavy metal, bemused Mexicans ("Echanos un grito pues!" I yelled as we ran past some paisanos at Foothill near High Street -- they obliged with a howl), millionaire Montclairians with lavish food spreads, community-oriented Fruitvale families, oblivious flea-marketers, Jack London Square hipsters, Mandela Parkway baptists, Lake Merritt joggers. I missed them, but there were even Raiderettes at the finish line.

With so much to look at, the distance was not that daunting. My problem, however, was my right iliotibial band, a ligament that runs from hip to ankle on the outside of the leg. Never an issue during the 19 weeks of training, not even a twinge in the Kaiser half-marathon in February. Six years after my first marathon, however, my IT band decided to show me, again, its displeasure. Back in April 2004 I ran the hilly, windy Big Sur marathon, and at mile 17 was stricken with horrible IT band pain. This time, the pain came much earlier. By mile 11 I had gone from wondering what kind of personal record I was going to set to wondering how the hell I was going to finish.

I think the cambered road and the pounding I took racing down Lincoln's steep hill (against the advice of the pacers, who I heard telling me to slow down as I left them behind) were the main culprits. Perhaps stretching wasn't good, once the pain had begun (I have since read that you shouldn't stretch during the acute phase because it only increases irritation). I tried to change my pace, lean on my left leg more, pick up my feet, run faster, chat with other runners and ask them what to do about it ("I had a problem all last year with my IT band," said one pacer), and finally pop 600 mg of ibuprofen at an aid station. It all worked, more or less, and I finished in 4:21, only about 6 minutes off my goal of 4:15 -- but 28 minutes faster than my first marathon! I felt good, other than my leg.

The post-race activities were marvelous. I waited in line and got a wonderful free massage. The booths and live music in the beautiful park in front of City Hall were well organized. Oh, and my race shirt and medal -- fabulous too. It's been great reading articles in the Tribune about the socioeconomic benefits of the race, and I am definitely looking forward to next year. Only maybe next time, I'll walk down Lincoln.

Upcoming Gigs and Other News

Dear Readers ~

I have been so busy writing, dancing and running that I have neglected my gig calendar. The first three months of 2010 have been full of gigs (mainly with other bands), the San Francisco Salsa Rueda Festival, a half marathon and freelance writing assignments (I write about music, technology and medicine, in English and Spanish).

It's been nice working with other bands, too, as I get to do what I love -- make music on stage -- but without the financial risk that comes with being a bandleader. Last week I was honored to play Yoshi's Oakland for Tito Gonzalez's CD release. And before you wonder why I didn't give you a heads-up, first, I apologize, and second, feel free to follow me on Twitter, or friend or fan me on Facebook -- I'm generally pretty active there and it's easier for this one-woman team to announce things that way.

I recently wrote a piece for MSN.com (not published yet) about women of Brazilian song, in which I interviewed Claudia Villela, Carol Saboya and Bebel Gilberto. That should be published in the next few weeks, but I'll also run longer excerpts from the interviews on my blog after the piece goes live.

Thank you as always for your support, suggestions, ideas and love!

Un abrazo,

Alexa

---

GIGS GIGS GIGS GIGS GIGS GIGS

Friday, March 26th, 2010
Andy y Su Orquesta Callao - 8:00pm
Montero's

1106 Solano Avenue
Albany, CA 94706
510-524-1270

Pura salsa pa goZar!

Sunday, March 28th, 2010
Salsa al Aire Libre! - 4:00pm
El Rio

3158 Mission St (@ Cesar Chavez)
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 282-3325

Con Andy y Su Orquesta Callao! Outdoor barbecue!

Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Alexa Weber Morales Band - 9:30pm
Cigar Bar

850 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-398-0850

With Evelio Roque, Omar Ledezma, Christian Tumalan and Sam Bevan! Cigar Bar & Grill is on Jackson Square at the corner of Montgomery and Pacific.

The Cigar Bar & Grill offers an atmosphere low on pretension and high on relaxation. We offer an excellent selection of cigars, wines and spirits. Inside, relax in our rustic environment, featuring welcoming leather couches, low lighting and wooden tables & chairs. There are indoor and outdoor pool tables. And enjoy an array of art from local talents such as Anastasia Schipani and Mike Wolf.

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
A Bailar Con Los Boleros! - 1:00pm
River Rock Casino

3250 Highway 128 East
Geyserville, CA 95441
(707) 857-2777

Alexa will be performing with Los Boleros. 21 and older only.

FROM SAN FRANCISCO AND OAKLAND:
Take Highway 101 north to Geyserville.
Take the exit toward CA-128 AND/GEYSERVILLE.
Turn right in CA-128/GEYSERVILLE AVE.
Turn right in CA-128
Look for Dry Creek Rancheria signs to River Rock Casino

Sunday, May 30th, 2010
Apostamos Con Los Boleros! - 9:00pm
River Rock Casino

3250 Highway 128 East
Geyserville, CA 95441
(707) 857-2777

Alexa will be performing with Los Boleros. 21 and older only.

FROM SAN FRANCISCO AND OAKLAND:
Take Highway 101 north to Geyserville.
Take the exit toward CA-128 AND/GEYSERVILLE.
Turn right in CA-128/GEYSERVILLE AVE.
Turn right in CA-128
Look for Dry Creek Rancheria signs to River Rock Casino

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
Latin for Lunch! - 12:00pm
Oakland City Center

12th and Broadway (center stage in front of Jamba Juice)
Oakland, CA 94607

Salsa, samba, funk and originals with the Alexa Weber Morales Band!

Saturday, June 12th, 2010
Latin Jazz in Tiburon! - 8:00pm
Servino Ristorante

9 Main St
Tiburon, CA 94920

With Alexa Weber Morales quartet.

Sunday, July 11th, 2010
Summer Camp July 11-18 - 8:00pm
Oakland Feather River Camp

5469 Oakland Camp Road
Quincy, CA 95971
510-336-2267

Alexa will be teaching Garage Band week. Voice, performance, percussion and repertoire.

Monday, August 9th, 2010
Summer Camp Dance August 9-15 - 8:00pm
Oakland Feather River Camp

5469 Oakland Camp Road
Quincy, CA 95971
510-336-2267

Alexa will be teaching latin dance (samba, salsa aerobics, beginning rueda)!

The Lady Bits of the Long-Distance Runner

It was mile 16 of a 20-mile preview run of the upcoming Oakland Marathon. We grabbed pretzels and refilled water in front of the Oakland Marriott at Broadway and 10th, the last water stop before we headed around Lake Merritt for the final four miles.

My friend and I prepared to cross Broadway. As we waited for the light, two business men with New York accents noticed the small crowd of athletes and asked us how far we were running.

“Twenty miles! It’s a prep for the Oakland marathon in three weeks!” we chirped.

“Twenty miles, that’s incredible!” said one of the men. “How long is the marathon?”

“Twenty-six-point-two,” I said.

“Wow. How -- how does that compare -- how long is the New York Marathon?”

“All marathons are 26.2 miles. That’s what a marathon is,” I said, perhaps smugly.

The man seemed flirtatious. And persistent: “Doesn’t it hurt your body? Are your knees holding up?”

“They’re doing OK,” I said. “Well, hers are, mine not so much,” said my friend.

“But doesn’t it make your uterus drop?”

“Uh, what?”

“Doesn’t it make your uterus drop? Someone was telling me running marathons made her uterus drop.”

While I was searching for a comeback and wondering when the light would change, my friend, mother of a grown child, joked, “I’m not planning to use mine.”

“Why aren’t you planning to use it?”

Time to jaywalk, ticket-happy Oakland police or no.

“Ah … you two are on a business trip, aren’t you? I can just tell,” I cracked, starting against the light. “Let’s get going,” I called to my friend.

We got across the street. “Can you believe those guys? God! Business men!”

“I’m so tired, I can’t even tell if that was offensive,” my friend said.

“Of course it was! Uterus dropping? I should have said, ‘Even worse, it really makes your scrotum sag.’” We were laughing and running.

Another group of women caught up with us at the next crosswalk and I told them about the exchange we’d just had with the business men. They all groaned. “Yeah, it makes your penis shrink!” called out one girl. The group laughed.

“Of course! From all the chafing!” I yelled. “Why don’t I ever think of these things in the moment?!”

Like: Dudes. You're in Oakland, not Las Vegas.


Image credit: Uterus Vase by The Plug & Stéphanie Rollin

Vocal Coach Decries Phenomenon of Over-singing

Vocal Coach Decries Phenomenon of Over-singing, Points to Popular Talent Shows

March 25, 2010 (Nashville) The American music scene seems to be experiencing a phenomenon of painfully loud and meaningless over-singing which could be due in part to hit talent shows like American Idol, according to Renee Grant-Williams, one of the nation’s leading voice experts and coach to some of the music industry’s biggest stars.

Grant-Williams points to this week's painful duet by two former Idol contestants as an example, "By shamelessly over-singing, Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas managed to destroy what might otherwise have been a perfectly decent song. Their performance was over-loud, over-ornamented, mutually over-competitive and ultimately banal."

"The lyrics to Make a Wave written by Scott Krippayne and Jeffrey D. Peabody are very positive and send a very powerful message," says Grant Williams. "However, these two singers obscured the words so badly by over-singing, that I had to look up the lyrics to see what they were actually saying. The very essence of a song is to touch the listener by conveying a message of some kind. That's difficult to do when no one can get a grip on the melody or understand what's being said."

Grant-Williams feels these non-verbal squiggles should be there for one reason only—to emphasize the powerful emotion of the song. "When a singer ornaments, it should be because, at that moment, the singer's emotions are running so high that words will not suffice; the singer is only capable of a visceral response too powerful to put into mere words," she says.

Grant-Williams also says singers she encounters are increasingly belting out songs to the point where words don’t matter. “We seem to be caught up in an epidemic of loud,” says Grant-Williams. "Singing should be more subtle than just slinging a lot of voice around. If you sing with a thundering voice, you sacrifice the honesty, intimacy, and integrity of music. Yet, this style is presented to millions of TV viewers as desirable.”

"You just don’t hear the level of ear-splitting over-singing in Australia and other places like you do here in America," says Grant-Williams, who recently returned from a sold-out teaching-tour of Australia. Observations she made during tours in Europe and South America confirm that this phenomenon is especially prevalent in the United States. "I’m convinced it’s due in part to the tremendous influence in the U. S. of talent shows where over-singing is rewarded.”

“I still think America has the best singers on the planet,” says Grant-Williams. “They just need to bring down the volume and focus on the words and the emotions. I’m determined to do what I can to curb these phenomenon before they get out of hand.”

Grant-Williams has as few simple suggestions to help singers get back to the basics of good singing:
1. A song is a one-way conversation, a singer must be very intimate with the words.
2. Singing should be like speaking with the audience, there's no need to yell.
3. Use consonants and silence to indicate the most important words of the song.
4. Use inflection sparingly as you would use spices, too much will ruin the song.

Grant-Williams coaches aspiring performers as well as celebrities including Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Miley Cyrus, Faith Hill, the Dixie Chicks, Tim McGraw, Christina Aguilera, Linda Ronstadt, Randy Travis, and Huey Lewis. She has been quoted by Cosmopolitan, the Associated Press, Business Week, UPI, Southern Living, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has appeared on many broadcast outlets including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, Bravo, USA, MTV, GAC, BBC, PBS, and NPR. Grant-Williams is a former instructor at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as well as the former director of the Division of Vocal Music at the University of California, Berkeley.

#

For more information or to schedule an interview with Renee Grant-Williams, call 615-244-3280 or visit www.myvoicecoach.com

Inspiration from Born to Run

I finished Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall in just a few sittings. I would have finished it faster if I hadn't read the first part aloud to my family, much to their annoyance.

I needed the inspiration, as I'm training for the Oakland Marathon, which is this Sunday. This will be my second marathon. The first was Big Sur in 2004, a hard initial outing -- hilly, windy and winding. My iliotibial band seized up at mile 17 thanks the to cambered road (Highway 1) -- along with hundreds of others, as evidenced by the agonized stretching going on around me.

Though I continued running shorter distances, I've enjoyed triathlon training the last two years and had begun thinking maybe everyone was right: triathlons were better for you than marathons. However, this training experience has been wonderful, long and slow (18 weeks!), and I have remained ache- and injury-free (fingers crossed). My knees protested the increase in distance around 13 miles, but now they seem happy. I have iced them only occasionally after runs, and haven't had to pop any pills.

Born to Run makes the argument that endurance running is not only not bad for your joints, it's what humans were designed to do. It also posits that today's plethora of running injuries are due to over-engineered shoes that encourage heel-striking rather than a forefoot-centered stride. Skeptic that I am, I thought the barefoot runners were nutty, though I did buy the argument that running on grass or beach was good for the muscles in the feet. We had a barefoot guy in last year's tri team, and now I'm embarrassed about my ignorant questions (for some reason I remember wondering if it was for religious reasons).

If you consider it, though, the flat-footed stride of a barefoot runner is more natural than heel-first. I also used to think our super-fast coach's (and her husband's) speedy hamster-wheel steps (similar to the POSE method) were strange. Now I find myself doing the same thing: picking up my heels, focusing on fast foot turnover, and landing flatter. My old way of running was with big, quad-crunching strides and major arm pumping. Now I keep my arms close to my torso.

I don't know how my stride will evolve further, but I have gotten faster in the last seven years -- and especially the last two. So check this out: Maybe I have even more years of speed ahead of me than I thought!

McDougall quotes Dennis Bramble, biology professor at the University of Utah in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains: "We monitored the results of the 2004 New York City Marathon and compared finishing times by age. What we found is that starting at age nineteen, runners get faster every year until they hit their peak at twenty-seven. After twenty-seven, they start to decline. So here's the question -- how old are you when you're back to running the same speed you did at nineteen?" The answer is not 36, or 45, or 55, but an astonishing 64 years old!

"There's something really weird about us humans; we're not only really good at endurance running, we're really good at it for a remarkably long time. We're a machine built to run -- and the machine never wears out," says Bramble in the book.

"You don't stop running because you get old, the Dipsea Demon always said. You get old because you stop running..." writes McDougall.

Further, as humans evolved, the difference between male and female diminished such that it's far less than in other primates. Human men are only 15% bigger than women, while gorillas are twice as big and chimps one-third. And women have proven, especially lately, that "caring for kids on the fly isn't that hard, as American ultrarunner Kami Semick demonstrates; she likes to run mountain trails around Bend, Oregon, with her four-year-old daughter, Baronie, riding along in a backpack." McDougall also notes that Emily Baer finished 8th overall among men and women in the 2007 Hardrock 100, while stopping to breastfeed her baby at every aid station (OK, that makes my boobs hurt just thinking about it -- but having climbed mountains while nursing I know it can be done). Among the world's last nomads, Congo Pygmies still hunt in mixed-gender groups.

I adore the wild characters and settings McDougall describes in the book, although sometimes his gonzo style makes me question the factual accuracy. I've read a number of adventure journalism books and his, unlike many I've seen, does not come with foot- or end notes. But it works well for the topic. His descriptions of my beloved Western states and Mexico, where he covers the running culture of the Tarahumara Indians, are effective and enticing.

Rather than go on, I'll close with a quote on one of many pages I dog-eared (oops, in my friend's book), where McDougall talks about Jenn, a wacky young party animal who runs 50-mile trails with the joy of a child. I couldn't help thinking of jazz traditionalists as I read this.

"Her naked delight is unmistakable; it forces a smile to her lips that's so honest and unguarded, you feel she's lost in the grip of artistic inspiration. Maybe she is. Whenever an art form loses its fire, when it gets weakened by intellectual inbreeding and first principles fade into stale tradition, a radical fringe eventually appears to blow it up and rebuild from the rubble. Young Gun ultrarunners were like Lost Generation writers in the '20s, Beat poets in the '50s, and rock musicians in the '60s: they were poor and ignored and free from all expectations and inhibitions. They were body artists, playing with the palette of human endurance."

You needn't run 50 or 100 miles to get that feeling, but that sensation of doing something that everyone around you says is insane, or pointless, or irresponsible -- and the fleeting nirvana when you realize you have just done it? I want some more of that.

My 9-Year-Old's Observation

Yesterday, coming home from school, my son said, "Mommy, day and night are opposites, but not just in the obvious way. If you think about it, in the day, light is everywhere and darkness has a shape, like a shadow. In the night, it's dark everywhere, but light has a shape in the dark, like headlights."

I thought that was brilliant.

If You Cross Me, Watch Out!

If you cross me, watch out!

I will bitch about it to my family endlessly, perhaps for a year or more, while you get shit done. Heck I might even complain bitterly about it to strangers or important business contacts who would have given me work if I hadn't come off as vengeful and unstable.

Yeah, and I might supersize myself. Mess with me and I could put on 20 pounds just to show you who's the victim here.

Watch out, because I'll be watching you. I will cyberstalk you and catalog your every move while my own web presence attracts old flies.

Stab me in the back and I'll never heal. I'll let myself go completely -- teeth, hair, nails, you name it. I'll be Cousin It, here in my hole, watching old sitcoms, wondering what you're doing right now. I know you'll be haunted by my total deterioration.

So don't you do me wrong. I won't forget it.

The Lady Bits of the Long-Distance Runner

It was mile 16 of a 20-mile preview run of the upcoming Oakland Marathon. We grabbed pretzels and refilled water in front of the Oakland Marriott at Broadway and 10th, the last water stop before we headed around Lake Merritt for the final four miles.

My friend and I prepared to cross Broadway. As we waited for the light, two business men with New York accents noticed the small crowd of athletes and asked us how far we were running.

“Twenty miles! It’s a prep for the Oakland marathon in three weeks!” we chirped.

“Twenty miles, that’s incredible!” said one of the men. “How long is the marathon?”

“Twenty-six-point-two,” I said.

“Wow. How -- how does that compare -- how long is the New York Marathon?”

“All marathons are 26.2 miles. That’s what a marathon is,” I said, perhaps smugly.

The man seemed flirtatious. And persistent: “Doesn’t it hurt your body? Are your knees holding up?”

“They’re doing OK,” I said. “Well, hers are, mine not so much,” said my friend.

“But doesn’t it make your uterus drop?”

“Uh, what?”

“Doesn’t it make your uterus drop? Someone was telling me running marathons made her uterus drop.”

While I was searching for a comeback and wondering when the light would change, my friend, mother of a grown child, joked, “I’m not planning to use mine.”

“Why aren’t you planning to use it?”

Time to jaywalk, ticket-happy Oakland police or no.

“Ah … you two are on a business trip, aren’t you? I can just tell,” I cracked, starting against the light. “Let’s get going,” I called to my friend.

We got across the street. “Can you believe those guys? God! Business men!”

“I’m so tired, I can’t even tell if that was offensive,” my friend said.

“Of course it was! Uterus dropping? I should have said, ‘Even worse, it really makes your scrotum sag.’” We were laughing and running.

Another group of women caught up with us at the next crosswalk and I told them about the exchange we’d just had with the business men. They all groaned. “Yeah, it makes your penis shrink!” called out one girl. The group laughed.

“Of course! From all the chafing!” I yelled. “Why don’t I ever think of these things in the moment?!”

Like: Dudes. You're in Oakland, not Las Vegas.


Image credit: Uterus Vase by The Plug & Stéphanie Rollin