🇺🇸 Victory Lap

Hello Adventurers, 

So, uh…what um, exactly happens next? It’s a question I’m asking myself more and more these days, and a question I rarely ask aloud and/or outwardly, but one I regularly think about quietly — and inwardly — at greater volume today. It is something I ponder because I recognise that I am an unconventional oddball who literally and figuratively moves through life and the world in a very strange and unorthodox manner…and such has the effect of putting me at odds with some of the traditional conventions that define adulthood; like career stuff, marriage, home ownership, parenthood, and whatever else.

My peers seem to move with logical linearity to sequentially strike the aforementioned stuff off of life’s list whereas I swerve, drift, reverse, and do burnouts as well as donuts on life’s highway (like a drunk driver and/or a child behind the wheel). Basically, what others experience as the normal flow of things, I experience as either abnormally stifling or not exciting enough…so I forever struggle to make a pact with the pack. Yes, I know how to play nice — and I do comprehend the general parameters of the game — but I find the rules to be somewhat absurd…so the rules are sorta lost on me (thus rendering me benched, ejected or dejected). Basically, the older I get the less I quote-unquote get; which is a humbling feeling that is compounded by everyone else seeming to be okay with the protocol and/or just having better figured life out…which starkly contrasts with my inability to do the bare minimum; fit in, and follow the program. Like, how do reconcile your uncertainties with everyone else’s certainties? That shit is warping my brain at the mo.

My current headspace isn’t necessarily uncomfortable (because I’m a certified outlier and forever scatterbrained), but it was nonetheless comforting to recently find myself in both a city — being New York — as well as a country — being America — all simultaneously doing our of own form of head scratching; from me to Mayor Adams’s corrupted Gotham City to the Orange Turd’s second term America (which is currently prepping for whatever Trump’s day one blitz is gonna be). Like rarely, if ever, does my personhood line-up with the fuckery of the place I find myself in — where, on multiple fronts — the personal, the municipal, and the federal somehow intersect with chump synchronicity as a collective ding-dong gong show. What a spectacle!

Dunno. Maybe I’m just overly in my feels — very much feeling unmoored — because of what was dredged up by having recently surpassed 80,150 kilometres by foot, which is a total distance equivalent to having lapped earth’s circumference twice. Anecdotally — and by way of athletics and adventure — this ‘feet feat’ of mine required me to average a half-marathon daily through 75-ish countries across six continents for nearly 10 Gladwellian years. To date, it has required me to dedicate 12,643 hours — being 526 straight days (simply stated as a different measure of time) — to a nearly non-stop pursuit where I’m forever strolling through myself, democracy, autocracy, theocracy, existence, and whatever else. The big takeaway? Despite variances in customs and geography, life is sorta the same everywhere; it is food, friends, family, faith, festivities, fucking, and having to go to fucking work. Overall, what I’ve observed out there, is that there isn’t one right way to be, and that revelation is sorta bringing some peace to the war inside my head…as I attempt to negotiate a ceasefire between my flawed character and the norms of convention.

Switching lanes now — because I left readers on a cliffhanger last summer — well, here’s the CliffsNotes; I didn’t end up getting that one gig out in Vancouver. It superficially hurt because I gave the intensive multi-part interview process my all, and I lost…and I fucking hate losing. And while it was a values-aligned opportunity that would’ve seen me enter into the world of professional sports to lead creative for some teams — which would’ve honoured my belief that sport is one of the last remaining forces of good because it unites different walks of life — the opportunity would’ve also required me to take a demotion in title, a pay cut, and work 4,300 kilometres away from my wife’s house, LOL. Cosmically, the universe didn’t like my doofus thinking — or my timeline — and thus made me wait for a more timely punchline; the day I completed my second lap of earth by foot, it rewarded me with a job offer (and one for a new and exciting executive role that is my most high-profile gig to date). Basically, I didn’t end up in sports, but I nevertheless made it to the big leagues. Accidents happen, and bless ‘em all.

So yeah, I kinda went to New York to celebrate that stuff (e.g. another lap, another job) — as well as advance some personal project stuff — but I mostly went to create some time and space in my fave city in order to ruminate on how cracking life maybe has more to do with accepting yourself as an oddity, and doing everything in your power to defy — or define — the odds (ideally on your own terms). That seems to be a more hopeful way of being, and way more aspirational than the wishy-washy words I kicked this corny emo introduction off with.

Like, nothing given nor anything entitled to, and I guess everything earned by chance, accident or effort? Again, dunno. Anyhoo, this issue of the newsletter chronicles three marathons and/or 150 kilometres by foot ‘round New York City in 3.5 days…where I sought clarity by looking to the arts to help me make sense of these in-flux times.

- Ben Pobjoy

P.S. Thanks to more adept human beings like Scott O’Hara, Matt Lewis, David Rusli, Tim Foran, and Elliot Pobjoy for their formal counsel and/or being informal sounding boards for some of my professional matters. And most importantly, thank you to my wife Christine for her unwavering support these past few years; I obliterated our life in 2022 by leaving a cushy and secure job…to wildly go all chips in on my DIY self-funded 2023 year-long global marathon project…and the parlay gamble paid off in 2024 (like I hoped it would). The Portugoose selflessly rode shotty to rally behind my dream, and now I’m in pole position to help drive Christine towards her dreams in 2025 (and to wherever else, ever after thereafter). And a note to my numb nuts self; keep your eyes on the road, put the pedal to the metal, stay rubber down, and drive things forward like a responsible adult husband humanoid would.

TREK TRACKER

World by foot and/or footnotes

• Countries marathoned to date: 75

• Marathons completed this year: 60

• Kilometres trekked by foot this year: 5,962.3

• Marathons completed since 2015: 904

• Total kilometres trekked since 2015: 80,519

• Next stops wish list: South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria

RAPID RECAP

A speedy synopsis for time-crunched readers

• The Wildest Thing: The Tribeca / Greenwich Village / Chelsea-spanning path along Battery Park City Esplanade / Rockefeller Park / Hudson River Park — if you stroll it between 7AM and 9AM — is the most reliable way to rub shoulders with a celebrity out jogging in NYC. I saw Casey Neistat ripping a respectably fast pace on this trip, and have seen lotsa other stars jogging there on past trips😎

• The Biggest Obstacle: Shit weather. Marathoning through downpours on congested sidewalks and getting repeatedly whacked in the head by everyone’s ginormous brollies…it really tested my patience🤬

• The Lesson Learned: It is hard, scary, and dangerous…but the last three years have genuinely taught me that risk begets reward🤑 

FIELD NOTES: NEW YORK, AMERICA

The art as looking glass

It should give us all consolation — concerning the acceptance of our individual flaws — that the greatest English-speaking city in the world reeks of piss, is strewn with trash, and is absolutely full of rats. It also dawned on me — when exiting the taxi cab in New York’s Lower East Side (so I could dump my crap at the hotel) — that my happiness is binary; unlocked by place that is either beautiful or bananas (very few are both, and those that are neither render me most unhappy).

The former — for me — is Malta, Buenos Aires, Iceland, Montevideo, Northern Portugal, and Japan, and the latter (where bananas is a term for either the busy or the bizarre) is New York, Tokyo, Mumbai, Tbilisi, The Balkans, and the Republic of Užupis. And if I were forced to pick one, ‘bananas-as-in-busy’ would always win out; for where there is a hive of humans as well as loads of human activity, there’s always the beautiful honey of the human condition drizzled onto your face (which — when compressed together by population density — spans the sweet to the sour, and is thus reliably sticky to elicit the greatest of observations and the deepest of reflections).

Anyway, I went to New York alone ‘cause the missus was still satiated from our swing through England and Wales last month, and this solo-ism enabled me to do my own thing; marathon non-stop, support the nerves of my worrywart bestie at a film screening, art crawl for meaning and clarity, and buy Black Friday-discounted trousers (because I recently renounced jeans…believing I’m now officially too old for them). Pro-tip learnt from some New York shopping: there’s a free-to-use washroom as well as a water fountain in the back of the Todd Snyder in Midtown and a free-to-use washroom on the café side of Maison Kitsuné in the West Village (I share this info because I am forever on the verge of pissing my pants on my marathons due to having a small bladder / all the public toilets in New York are the thing of nightmares due to how stinky and filthy they are).

I don’t want to overly retread old newsletter subject matter, but I returned to New York — in part — because our short animated film The Brown Dog was screening there again (this time at the beautiful NeueHouse). While The Brown Dog premiered at the Tribeca Festival last June, it has since toured the festival circuit, won a grand prize, and qualified for both the Academy Awards and the BAFTA Film Awards. As such, we’re now in the middle of a ‘For Your Consideration’ campaign to inspire Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members to watch our film so they hopefully vote for it to win an Oscar next March. To entice viewing, Steve Buscemi kindly introduced the film to AMPAS voting members (he’s in the film / helped make it / hence why he was at the recent screening), and the New Yorker’s Kelefa Sanneh led a Q&A afterwards with the filmmakers (who are my BFFs Jamie-James Medina and Nadia Hallgren). A nice surprise was seeing art world superstar Marina Abromović and LES fixture Clayton Patterson in the audience during the evening’s first screening, and then having two of my new colleagues — Juliet and Sarah from the New York office — come out to the second screening to meet me in person (which is/was very thoughtful and welcoming).

Anyway, I chilled with Buscemi for a bit in the green room — but I’m a nobody who just keeps it cordial with celebrities — so I instead badgered Kelefa with questions about writing books and pitching stories, LOL. I know the latter seems gauche but he’s a friend of a friend, and we’ve all gone to boxing matches together in the past (so the gloves were off as a I jabbed at Sanneh for his wisdom and his insights).

All of this may read as glamorous — being a film producer — but the truth is, is that I did non-glamourous work on The Brown Dog; liaising with talent, advancing contracts, providing some story notes as we worked to lock picture, and then helping with the communications, online presences, strategising, and marketing when the film wandered out into the world. None of this is sexy BUT I’m stoked to share that you can now watch The Brown Dog for free online, and that Variety exclusively broke the news about Idris Elba and Chiwetel Ejiofor joining the project.

While I’m a writer and photographer by trade — and a former art gallery owner — I’ve been atypically close to illustration and animation this year (because of The Brown Dog). So to show some respect to the art form / prevent myself from being perceived as a total poseur, I finally hauled my lazy ass up to Overlook…which I’ve been meaning to do for like a decade. And boy oh boy, do I ever regret my procrastination ‘cause this pilgrimage delivered some gobsmacking glory.

Today, Overlook is a very mediocre / almost shithole sports bar in East Midtown. However, before it changed ownership (which has happened a few times), the space was originally Costello’s, a speakeasy that opened in 1929 (and which was frequented by everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Marilyn Monroe). However, in 1976, the bar closed for 24 hours so that 30 of America’s best-known cartoonists could doodle on the walls (in exchange for free food and drink). This resulted in what The New York Times has described as, “The Sistine Chapel of Comic-Strip Art.”

Growing up, I loved stuff like Garfield and Tintin and Mad Magazine so comic-strips in newspapers were my thing (over, say, comic books in the Marvel and/or DC vein). As such, it was mental to see original doodles on the walls by Al Jaffee (Mad), Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey), Sergio Aragonés (Mad), Dik Browne (Hägar the Horrible), Al Kilgore (Bullwinkle), and lots of other greats (prolly unknown to anyone younger than 40 years old). Even wilder was me taking in the art as twenty-something Midwestern tourists got hammered on cheap beer — and gorged chicken wings — as they watched sports on the bar’s television. Like, at Overlook you have to lift up different nylon sports flags just to see some of the comic-strip art on the stained and yellowing walls (‘cause neither the bar nor the bar-goers seem to care much for it). Most humbling is that bar-goers have added their own doodles onto some of the art. I know this may horrify some, but I think it offers anyone creative some sobering lessons in a place of drunks; that ‘great art’ is often contextual (and not recognised as inherently great), that no art is intrinsically sacred, and that most normies think our art is garbage (and better to bested by being scribbled over).

The weather was so cold and wet in New York — and was like that for days on end — that I accidentally rubbed my hands to a raw and bloodied state inside the rain soaked pockets of my rain jacket. Trekking thus sorta sucked — and I was so soggy that I was too embarrassed to make sopping pit stops anywhere indoors — so I just committed to staying outdoors, dealing with it, and slaying marathons via toxic alpha masculinity. However, after a few days I couldn’t take it anymore — ‘twas freezing my nards off — so I sought warm shelter (especially since my hands hurt so badly). As such, I took cover inside art galleries courtesy of the predilections of my organic beta masculinity. Such is the duality of man, bb.

Inexplicably, I’ve sorta slept on hitting Chelsea galleries these past few years — prolly due to prioritising other stuff when I’ve been in New York — so it felt like the perfect time to re-spank it all again. Now, whether you like art or not, an art crawl of Chelsea is definitely worth your time; it is free to do, the museum-quality programming is some of the best on the planet (hence offering you a great primer), and the major galleries are housed in beautiful spaces with inspired interiors (e.g. the wood stamped concrete exterior of David Zwirner makes me drool with envy, and it is my dream to have walls like that). 

There are, of course, a few ways to tackle an art crawl. You can take a preemptive gander at the ‘cities’ section on Ocula (to see what curatorial programming catches your eye). Or you can just visit the well-known heavy hitters that rarely disappoint. I took the latter approach because I know what’s what (and have hyperlinked what I believe the best Chelsea galleries are); enabling me to see individual Robert Frank and Irving Penn exhibitions at different locations of the Pace Gallery, Keith Haring at Pace Prints, Annie Leibovitz at Hauser & Wirth, and Richard Serra at David Zwirner. Obviously, Gagosian should be on that list too (but their current programming for their multiple New York locations didn’t excite me). While gallery programming is ever-changing, I can promise you that these galleries mostly always slay.

I’ll keep it brief — since exhibitions are temporary — but Annie Leibovitz’s Stream of Consciousness was straight mastery; from the work to its presentation, sequencing, and installation. Leibovitz is easily the best portraitist to have ever done it, and I actually laughed at the exhibition because the work is so extraordinary (and it humbled me, full well knowing I can never shoot at her level, which is why it is important for us creatives to have perfect Gods…which we must prostrate before as well as practice against…in order to demigod our artistic development to a higher level). Lastly, Richard Serra’s Every Which Way resonated with me in a way that his work has never done before; not ‘cause he recently passed, but because it felt timely in America right now (with me interpreting the work as individuals standing tall — regardless of political administration — who carry on living because life goes on) or because I needed it as an affirming looking glass on which to project and reflect (being the need to remain brutal, enduring, and ever outlasting in order to survive life; either the one we rigidly choose or the one we accept with rigidity).

BEST LOCAL THING-Y

My wife thoughtfully put Orchard Grocer on my radar during our last trip to New York, and did so because it makes plant-based ‘takes’ on bodega deli counter classics…and because she knows I’m a sandwich fiend. When travelling alone, I don’t really fuss over food; so I hit the Orchard Grocer daily on this trip because it was nearby, quick, and easy. Basically, I’d order something different each day for a take-out lunch, and go eat it back at my hotel room as I changed the television channels between CNN and Fox News (to marvel at the different sides of the two different coins that lack currency in consensus reality). It probably isn’t healthy to consume this junky media while eating junk food, but it does make you lose your appetite sans need for all the Ozempic and Wegovy that’s advertised among the op-ed commentary sold to us as news programming).

Pictured above is The Monte, which is Orchard Grocer’s seitan mortadella, vegan provolone, olives, tomato, roasted red peppers, pepperoncini, greens, and vegan mayo on a hero. It is what you expect it to be; juicy on the inside, crispy on the outside, and a reminder to add pepperoncini — which is a truly under-celebrated topper — to any sandwich you make at home. Here, I also ate The Francis sandwich, The Rocko sandwich, and the fried tofu nuggets. IMHO, The Monte and The Francis were the stand-outs.

Beyond Orchard Grocer, I enjoyed buying two ounce bags of warmed-up / honey-coated cashews for $4 from some ‘hot nuts’ vendor cart near the Staten Island Ferry terminal. And in the evenings — after the marathons were bagged and I had cleaned-up — I hit Thai Dinner, Spicy Moon, and Punjabi Deli with my bestie across three different nights. All those places rip, but the overdue social hangs with my mate offered the tastiest soul-filling food-for-thought, because me and Jamie-James discussed film and story as we chuckled about the hilarious pitfalls of erroneously choosing the creative life.*

*Much love to Jamie-James for being so generous with his time, being a great friend, my truest collaborator, and for always challenging me in our conversations as well as across our many creative projects together. I deeply appreciate you, my guy.

POBJOY'S GLOBAL PRICE INDEX

This is an on-going documentation of how much things cost in different places around the world. Here are some of the things I bought in New York (all prices converted to USD):

• A 12 ounce soy latte from a café with tip: $7

• A 12 pack of 355ml Pepsi Max cans from a pharmacy: $11.48

• A commemorative 50th anniversary ceramic coffee mug for Robert Caro’s The Power Broker from The New York Historical Society: $21.77

MARATHON MUSINGS

On the era of our ways

I think we can all agree that the most recent American election was the best season of American Idol yet. We had Biden — the least available / least transparent President since Reagan — crash and burn when he finally revealed his late stage cognitive decline on-stage at his final debate with Trump, we had a Vice President — with one of the lowest approval ratings in modern history — be repackaged as the best last-minute-replacement presidential candidate (through anointment over democratic primaries), and we had Trump survive two assassination attempts (as he trumped not one but two political rivals). In sum and meme, Harris’s brat summer was a fail because it gave way to the reelection of a bully come fall. But, seriously, are we not entertained? Personally, I’d have requested a full refund in lieu of those lousy party tickets!

And I can’t say that I was surprised by the results. When Evan Vucci’s instantly iconic image went viral, I was fairly certain Trump would win. And then when Dick Cheney — one of the deadliest war criminals of the 21st century — endorsed Harris (an endorsement Democrats bizarrely celebrated and amplified), I knew the stammering / non sequitur speaking Harris had surely received the kiss of death by way of that dickhead’s lips. The stranger thing, of course, is that all of this played out in the Upside Down of these puzzling switcheroo times; with the GOP becoming the anti-establishment / working class-appealing party as the Democrats metamorphosed into a war hawk party at peace with the status quo.

Anyway, when I marathon Toronto with hometown advantage — using known routes free of bad actors and bad drivers — it is safe for me to trek with podcasts piping into my ears. As such, in New York, I couldn’t stop thinking about three recent Toronto listens, all of which concern America: Bernie Sanders rightfully calling a broken spade a broken spade (and one unable to dig everyday people out of increasing suffering), Nancy Pelosi being completely out to lunch as well as completely out of touch with plebeian realities, and historian Gary Gerstle surmising that we’re approaching a yet-to-be-fully-defined new political order. And, listen, if you’re tight on time — and can’t triangulate my trio of recos — then just listen to this one Republican pollster ring the bell about the bellwether he foresaw years ago.

Why care about this all? Well, because America is a superpower — and whether you’re American or not — all of us live in the shadow of the city upon a hill, and we therefore feel the effects of what America chooses to shine its powerful spotlight down onto or up upon.

Now, I’m a British-Canadian dual citizen so I don’t — nor didn’t — have a horse in the race, but I nevertheless intently followed the American election. Why? Well, because I believe it is/was incredibly influential in terms of global tone-setting; especially since pandemic-era incumbents are getting drubbed in elections worldwide (see here and here if you weren’t aware), and they’re largely being replaced by what feels like populists and isolationists.

And this development makes me a tad uncomfortable. Selflessly, because I believe that multilateral cooperation is a much needed counterpoint to regulate unilateral dog-eat-dog competition (and vice versa), and selfishly because I’m a global citizen — gallivanting around the world on my marathons to earth’s edges — and a closed-off world truly bums me out (e.g. more paperwork and a greater likelihood of rejected tourist visa applications).

Whether your side wins or loses in politics, I got some impartial news for you — which I patiently collected on 12,643 hours of strolls across 75-ish countries as well as through every type of political system imaginable worldwide — it’s that everyday life goes on regardless of who our overlords are, and regardless of what they enact (and that should give you some peace or some consternation if you lost, and some consternation or some peace if you won). Everything changes but nothing ever feels that different. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sure, policy can affect us all (and, of course, does so in varying ways based on our own specific circumstances and/or conditions), but I’m routinely shocked by how unaffected-by-politics everyday life remains when there are significant changes to politics, be it in places bolstered by freedom or those burdened by oppression. As previously stated, regular life is mostly just food, friends, family, faith, festivities, fucking, and having to go to fucking work. Each represents the small moments in our big lives, and most wiggle themselves around the medium of the politics at hand. And please don’t mistake me as apologist for the times — or perceive me as indifferent — rather, just know that I have observed millions of humanoids worldwide to be delightfully ungovernable and playfully mischievous. Us? We continue to exist in light of it all, no matter how dark it gets.

And while I know what I know — because of what I have seen on my slow marathons across earth — I nevertheless struggle to internalise the reassurances that have been revealed to me. Things now — more so than at any other point in my life — just feel so out-of-my-control. Like, sorta unstable in aggregate, and — as a result of such — I feel a little destabilised by it all. This minor queasiness of mine was prolly the major reason I pulled over on a New York marathon to get an aura portrait at Magic Jewellery, which sits just south of Canal Street in Chinatown. Yes, aura portraits are pure woo-woo hogwash, but I nevertheless felt the need to do a personal vibe check.

As such, I paid $30 for the portrait and an extra $10 for the old geezer behind the glass counter to do a reading of it (i.e. to explain to me what all the auras mean and meant). And I was sorta surprised by what he said ‘bout my near-past, my current present, and my near-future chakras; they’re all boringly consistent and throughly stable, LOL. The preponderance of ‘blue’ signified lots of deep thinking and inner planning (true), the hint of ‘green’ signified some upcoming prosperity (true…freelance invoices and paycheques are due in January), and the overall assessment was that I am someone who feels a great deal of responsibility to take care of others as I paradoxically need a lot of time and space to do my own thing (unfortunately, very true too). The two strikes against me, were; learning that I need to be more vocally communicative (which is something my wife regularly tells me for free), and that I don’t like the city in which I live (which is something costly I already freely tell myself all the time). My big takeaway from the believe-it-or-not aura portrait reading? That I am doing okay despite how I feel — which is a reminder to never fully trust one’s feelings — and that I can be okay in a world that I’m less okay with. Said another way, that life goes, and I should too.

All things considered, I couldn’t stop contemplating Gary Gerstle’s inkling that we’re entering a new political order, one in this undefined era. Like, where are we actually headed? Dunno. But by wandering The High Line on a late-night marathon, I think I caught a glimpse — or saw a sign — of what’s to come vis-à-vis Glenn Ligon’s Untitled (America/Me).

Admittedly, we can never fully know what someone else’s art means, but if I read between the lines of Ligon’s single line, I think his message is that we’re now segueing from a ‘What’s in it for us?’ era to a ‘What’s in it for me?’ era. Oof, yikes, and how cutthroat.

But will we? Who effing knows. I guess we’ll have to wait and see?

Yes, absolutely, because the art elsewhere told me as much.

And I put stock in that, because I genuinely believe that art can help us make sense of this whacky world of ours (being our private and internal one as well as the shared and external one). But mostly, I’m just grateful that New York reliably remains the undisputed centre of the art world…and thus a timelessly clarifying city for when you find yourself — or feel yourself to be — in the muck of modernity’s murk.

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