Faster

I'm a pretty bad runner, the kind that likes to walk every second lap or so. I generally am almost unable to do it at all unless I have a really great record to keep time to while I'm trying to burn off that coconut cream tapioca pudding I had polished off a few hours earlier. My favorite running music right now is Les Savy Fav's Let's Be Friends. It's probably my favorite record of 2007. I remember seeing them at the St. Paul Student Center (i.e. Bailey Hall cafeteria) and they took all this stuff that was backstage (Christmas trees, American flag, podium) and integrated it into their show. The ending of the show was so catastrophic and ridiculous I felt weird for about a week afterwards. The first track off of Let's Be Friends, "Pots and Pans," is beautifully epic in the beginning, and has that kind of beat that makes you feel like you're out in the Nebraska countryside, running past farms and tractors and a big blue sky. "Patty Lee" is also another great running song and lots of male falsetto and nice guitar lines. I had a big crush on Seth Jabour for a long time, so sometimes while jogging and listening to "Patty Lee," I'd pretend I'm getting fit for my imaginary date with him. There are also a lot of bona fide fist-pumpers ("The Equestrian", "Raging in the Plague Age") to amp myself up to pass the speedwalkers in my way, leaving them in my dust. "Raging in the Plague Age" has one of the best teenage first-pumping anthem lyrics to it: "Draw up the drawbridge, draw down the blinds/everyone inside is getting high tonight/waiting for the plague to move on/no one's getting sober until the liquors all gone".

If you want to witness the mayhem of Les Savy Fav, check out this clip of them off of Conan O'Brien at the end of January: