Yesterday was one of those days when you really need to get out of the house. It was just one of those days anyway. You know, those days when you aren’t really sure where you stand with yourself or with anyone else? We have them every now and then. I’ve decided that there are two kinds of people, mainly, here in America. I can’t really speak for people anywhere else. I can’t even speak for people here actually. I can’t speak for anyone. What I do know is this: some people live life with their emotions exposed. They are not “normal” by society’s standards and life is uncomfortable most of the time, but especially so when they are trying to conform to some kind of “normal” role. Weird, I know. I am one of the non-normal people. I have never fit in with the “normal” people. I am much more comfortable with people who aren’t “normal,” that’s the truth. I think, in general, we live against our natural inclination as a species, this, I believe, is the cause of our all of our neuroses.

But that isn’t what I’m talking about today. Except to say that one of the reasons I like Marc Maron’s podcast so much is because he isn’t one of those “normal” people either. Moreover, he spends, it seems to me, every second of every day just trying to get through it without losing his mind. That is what makes his podcast so compelling: he struggles with it every second of every day. As do most of us non-normal people.

And so it was with my friend (fake podcast person friend) Marc Maron that I set out on one of the different long walks, or sometimes runs, I like to take – and that’s near a golf course in Encino. Depending on which route you take you can do a three mile or a five mile walk or run. It is mostly populated with other fitness-minded people, but also cranes, coyotes, squirrels, lizards, colorful birds, geese, ducks…lots of fauna. In the summer it is also a favorite picnic spot for families to get out of their hotbox apartments and onto the grass for a time. Little barbecues with sizzling chorizo sausages, tortillas…I’ve been reading too much of TC Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain I’m afraid.

It was already an emotional day for me – the kind I knew getting out in the fresh air and sunshine would really help. In the post-Oscar haze of the months in between the Oscar race and the start of the new season is usually a time to decompress. For reasons I won’t get into I was feeling really down. I kind of felt like I just wanted to feel “normal.” Routine is the way to feel normal, I figure. So a walk was definitely in order.

Marc Maron always opens his podcast with his funny intro (WHAT THE FUCK!), usually a product endorsement — hopefully the one about vibrators — and then he’ll talk about something for a little while. I podcast every week with Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere so I know how hard it is to be entertaining on your own. You really need someone to talk to usually. But Maron is one of those guys who can really do it alone. I think it gets back to that undeniable thing about him that he is working hard every second of every day not to lose his mind. And that makes him a great speaker, comedian and interviewer. After he talks a while he has a guest on. Men, women, mostly comedians.

So I put on his latest podcast and I started walking. But you know, I noticed that the ground was kind of muddy, a little muddy from the recent rains here. They had closed Burbank Blvd. because the train blockers had broken and were dangling in the road. They also put up a sign that said “Road closed.” This, to hopefully keep walkers and joggers off of the main trail. But did I listen to it? Did I stop and say, oh, maybe they put that there for a reason. No. I did not. I simply looked to see if anyone else was doing it. Okay, he was doing it, that guy was jogging right on in.

And that, I guess, was good enough for me. So off I went. It wasn’t so bad at first. A few fallen trees here, a downed fence line there. But it wasn’t long before I got to the mud part. Slosh slosh slosh. It was bad but not so bad that I felt like I had to turn around. There were plenty of footprints already in the mud – how did these people manage to get through it? So I kept slogging. A guy jogger in front of me was already calf-deep in it and he said to turn back. But did I listen?

I saw one of the closer exits that would take me to the sidewalk outside of the dirt path. And to the left the trail continued. Looking back on it, that would have been the way to go — get to the dirt path. Apparently, where I was walking was part of a wetland. They had built a golf course over a whole wetland — had there been protests to this way back when? Was this nature’s brutal payback? But I didn’t know if it would continue to be so muddy on down the trail and decided to take my chances to get to the exit. But half-way through my two shoes got stuck in the mud. I literally couldn’t take another step. So I unplugged my two feet and simply left my boots there. They are still there as we speak. Not soon after that, I pulled off my muddy socks. Once my feet were free of the socks and shoes, walking through the mud was a piece of cake. The easiest thing imaginable. The natural thing.

I flap flapped my feet through the mud to the entrance and made it on the sidewalk. The sidewalk, though, was covered with mud too and I almost slipped and fell several times. The workers there with bulldozers had closed the road. One of them waved me off, “this is closed!” he pantomimed. I held up my socks and pointed to my feet – please just let me through, I silently pleaded to the face behind the Plexiglass. Nope, that was the answer. Nope.

So I flap flapped my muddy feet back inside, where the mud continued to be deeper than I could ever imagine. And there wasn’t a soul crazy enough to take this trek, although enough people had that the footprints were like the Laetoli footprints – those ancient fossils that proved how mankind walked upright. It was a family walking there whose footprints had been trapped in volcanic ash, discovered many years later by Mary Leakey, and it was really the first real evidence of primates walking upright.

Mark Maron was saying something profound about the Coca Cola company, touching on moments of insight and brilliance as usual, struggling to stay sane. It wasn’t until I saw a mud-caked lizard lying dead that I stopped feeling sorry for myself. He had it way worse than I did. And I wondered how many little creatures had been killed by this storm. I also saw a dead bird. It couldn’t have been pretty; the storm had downed the entire fence around the golf course which had to mean something overflowed and flash-flooded the area.

I was walking on terrain that I had walked so many times before but this time doing it barefoot, making me look like a crack addict homeless hooker. My only redeeming detail was my iPhone 4 and my expensive down jacket. I had to look like a freak otherwise. Believe me, no one ever walks barefoot on jogger trails unless they’re a partying meth head who somehow disappeared out of a house somewhere without their shoes. Or else some weird European or Eastern European who thinks this is how they do things in California. But did I care? No, I didn’t. I was Laetoli-ing it, my friends, primate style, animal style, real human being style. Our feet are little miracles, I’m telling you, by far one of the best things ever to evolve. They can take us very far over varying terrain. No problem in mud or dirt or grass or gravel.

I kept walking, all three miles out. At some point it stopped being muddy and became harder earth. And that’s when it all felt semi-sane again, and when I looked the crazier. What happened to my shoes? Should I have dug them out and carried them dripping in mud to a trash can at least? Was I a filthy litterer on top of just being filthy? Yes, probably.

The Laetoli family that walked through the mud so long ago, in the Olduvai Gorge in what is now Nigeria, they were just getting on with it, you know, getting on with life. They didn’t have the same kind of problems we have now. They didn’t have to worry about leading a “normal” life, being or appearing happily married and all of that. Or maybe they did. Maybe it was more about having to appear as a strong and brave hunter. Or an attractive pre-teen mate? Hard to say. What I do know is this: it felt good walking through that mud in my bare feet. And it was funny. It was ridiculous and crazy and absurd. But it helped me get through that day, that hard hard day.

Marc Maron helped too.

I posted this on my other site, awardsdaily.com, which follows the Oscar race. Why I believed it pertinent to the discussion over there is that this film, complete and total propaganda, is being dressed up to look like a documentary. Nothing new there – Michael Moore has been making leftist propaganda movies forever. It’s just that Creationism/Evolution is a subject close to my own heart. I am both amazed at the idiocy of Creationism and rather horrified, frankly, that anyone would think posting something negative about Expelled would be a controversial move. To me it’s about as controversial as posting an article about how cigarettes are bad for your health. Anyway, here it is:

PZ Myers, who writes the addictive site scienceblogs.com/pharyngula chats with his friend, Richard Dawkins, who was let in to see the Creationist Intelligent Design “doc”, Expelled. The two chat about the xperience and the film in this clip (gotten from Scienceblogs.com):

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c39jYgsvUOY]

I know only human being I’d actually like to murder. Now, I can add a few soldiers to the list:

Congolese militia are threatening to slaughter rare mountain gorillas in Congo’s Virunga National Park after they raided the eastern reserve at the weekend, killing a wildlife officer, officials said.

Up to three more local wildlife workers were injured in the attacks early on Sunday by Mai Mai militia fighters on three conservation and tourism camps in the park, in
Democratic Republic of Congo’s violence-torn North Kivu province.

Officials in Virunga, Africa’s oldest national park established in 1925, said on Monday the attackers looted the three sites, seizing arms and communications equipment.

The area attacked is only two hours walk from a unique and isolated population of gorillas, according to WildlifeDirect, an organization involved in conservation in Virunga, which is home to half of the 700 mountain gorillas that remain in the world.

“This was an unprovoked attack on our Rangers and other wildlife officers who protect Virunga’s wildlife. And the Mai Mai said that if we retaliate, they will kill all the gorillas in this area,” Virunga’s Park Director Norbert Mushenzi said in a statement distributed by WildlifeDirect.

During the raids, 13 other local wildlife workers were taken hostage by the militia fighters but were subsequently released, WildlifeDirect said.

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