shani-o: I was intrigued by Up when I heard about it on Fresh Air. It was the first animated film to open Cannes, and having seen it last night, I can totally understand why. It was beautiful and moving, goofy and ridiculous, and I totally cried. Twice. (G.D. almost did, too, but don’t tell him I told you.) It’s an adventure story, it’s a love story, it’s a bit of a coming-of-age story — for both the old man and the little boy — and it has classic Disney silliness and lovely Pixar animation. I recommend going to a showtime with fewer kids…in the midst of a sweet, sad moment, hearing a bored little one behind you ‘whisper’ “Mama, do you want some popcorn?” can be a bit jarring.
G.D. I’ve been a gym rat for a nice minute now, but it was only a few months ago I actually started running in earnest. Now that I’ve gotten decent at it — I ran 10 miles two weeks ago mostly on a lark — I’ve adopted the zeal of the convert. (New York is one of those places that only gets three or four weeks of spring, and I’ve been out everyday trynna get it in before our sweltering, smelly-ass summer rolls in.) A lot of people of hate running, which I think has a lot to do with the monotony and the considerable early difficulty, but these are easily remedied: run outside and put together a good playlist. WalkJogRun has a list of running trails entered by users in dozens of cities and countries, and Nike Fit has a dope new running mix by De La Soul. So get off the couch and go outside, bammas.
quadmoniker: DoubleX, Slate‘s new sister spinoff that got off to a bit of a rocky start, is now a podcast, too. Emily Bazelon, one of DoubleX’s founding editors, is the host, and she must be getting busy jumping from gabfest to gabfest. David Plotz’s wife, Hanna Rosin, joins, and she and Emily have as much chemistry as David and Emily do on the political gabfest. The third commenter is another founding editor, Meghan O’Rourke, and the conversation — on Sotomayor, that study on women’s happiness, and Terminator — is pretty good. I’ll admit I was ready to write off DoubleX in the beginning; they all do the same thing I noticed Bryn Mawrtyrs doing in college: when they make a point, they intone their voice so that it rises at the end, as if everything were a question. Why do people do that?
