Last night my daughter asked if I could come to the Fun Run please please please please? And of course I said yes; no excuse I could invent would salve my own conscience, no matter how much I hate to run. I can see good reasons for running, and I expect that should such a situation arise I will have the requisite panic-fluids sluicing through my bloodstream to overcome any lack of training. And if I can’t outrun whatever is after me, well, then it would have got me anyway. Because if it’s after me it’s a tiger. Or a fireball. Or a slow-moving Martian tripod that will get me one way or the other, or reduce civilization to ash and fire. I get a lot of exercise going up and down the stairs 104543 times a day, and just generally being a get-up-go-somewhere-do-something guy. It’s hard to sit for two hours in a movie theater, for example.

Anyway. It’s half an hour of running around the gym. All parents are welcome. We did it last year, and I didn’t expire. This year turned out to be 40 minutes. You don’t have to run the entire time; you can walk or jog, and if you have shooting pains bolting up your shoulder and clattering down your left arm you can sit down. The gym instructor is not going to come over and shout GET UP MAGGOT. But I wanted to set a good example for my kid; we weren’t going to stop, except to deal with fluid management. I got cramps in my shins. On the second lap. Well, run it off, man; you have 38 minutes and 12 seconds to go.

The actual goal was 30 minutes, but we were encouraged to do ten more to show our dedication to running around. Everyone kept going. Why not? It was fun; hence the name. The music was good. I knew all the tunes, and just like last year, brought humiliation to my child by singing the lyrics out loud and making Rock Faces. All the parents - most of them late-procreators, like me - got seriously down to Funkytown, and you could feel the shame rolling off the kids in bright red waves.

Afterwards I threw on a sweater and went to the office – looked like hell, but figured what the heck. Who cares. I sit way in the back. As it turns out, I was requested to do a video – they had a big online collection of pix of kids having a bad Santa experience, and wanted to promo it, so  . . . I looked at some of the pix, miked up, sat down, and talked to the camera for a few minutes. This is the way we roll: no script, one take. It doesn’t have to be perfect or overthought. Hold ye no meetings. Just do the damned thing.

Here it is.

As for the Jimmy “Jim” Lileks show, it’ll be back; went on a holiday hiatus. After all, he was run over by a car in the last episode. We’ve been reploying resources to a few other projects, including a nifty one coming next year. Can’t say more, but I’m happy to be part of it.

There will be a preview of sorts next Tuesday, and I will have tales to tell after that. Suffice to say that a new skill set will be required, and if someone told me years ago this is what I would end up doing in newspapers, I would have done a jig on the spot. If someone had a hornpipe. I should check the Apple apps store for the iPhone; surely there’s a free hornpipe simulator in there somewhere. Even if just plays the Popeye theme.

Extra-busy night, so this is it, aside from the usual additions: ten new (old) restaurant postcards. Sounds dull, doesn’t it? Not if you like the look of old chrome and unique roadsign design. They all come down to burgers and fries and club sandwiches, I suppose, and coffee served in heavy ceramic mugs (until the 70s, when they switched to those godless brown mugs that tapered in the middle, and had a thin lip that insured prompt tongue-burning every time. I hated those mugs. They were ubiquitous for a while, just like the tall red brushed-plastic glasses that somehow made your soft drink taste worse.) So there’s that. There’s today’s installment of this:

From the makers of Bonsai Kitty, Bonsai Santa!

Tomorrow: news from a movie premiere. And it’s Lance Lawson Thursday over at buzz.mn, so see you there with some brain-bafflers from 1948. This week each will have a fictional introduction, like the original Lance stories had so many years ago. (See what I mean about the immensity of this site? My God, there's just endless bytes of krep nested in every folder.) Have a grand day!