I wasn't planning on writing a post today, considering the post-Thanksgiving Turkey coma. But, I find myself with some time on my hands, and it's a pretty solid release day. What tipped me over the edge was the discovery of a couple solid Bandcamp finds, so away we go!

It's a super short one this week, because real life is dumb. 

For the last several weeks I've been pretty good about writing about one of my two chosen lanes. There's been plenty of metal content on this little site. The fitness side of things... not so much. This won't be the first time I've written about this and it won't be the last, but I'm in the midst of a little fitness fail. Today is Tuesday, and I made it into the gym both today and yesterday, but today's workout was a struggle. That may be because the previous two weeks were a mess - I got in one or two workouts in each of those two weeks. And in the weeks before that, I was getting in my five workouts a week, but concerned that I might be plateaued. My lifts weren't progressing. Some were maybe even moving backwards. And with the holidays upon us, I know I won't be able to hit some things as hard as normal. 

Had I not stalled out, I would be finished up with my current 12-week program by now. Instead, I'm on my third attempt to get through week 10. But like SpongeBob, I shall persevere. He's honestly a great fitness role model! The little dude just doesn't quit and has a great attitude no matter what challenges come his way. Plus, he seems very comfortable in his own skin (does he have skin?). 

I'm going to channel my inner SpongeBob. I'll get through this program in fits and starts, but I'll get it done. Then I'll keep thing up with "maintenance" workouts as much as possible through to the new year, when I'll start my next program, full of confidence that I'll get through this fitness low point and come back stronger than ever. Just like SpongeBob would do.

Then I'll celebrate with a Krabby Patty, because life is about balance. And let's be honest, they look tasty as hell. 

It's a big, weird day in heavy music, filled with big, weird releases from big, weird bands! I've got not one, not two, but three collaborative albums on my list today, as well as some other stuff. New music ahoy!

This is going to be shorter than my typical concert recap because of a crazy busy day, but I caught (most of) Boris at the Fine Line in Downtown Minneapolis last night. They were in town for their 20th anniversary of Pink and brought Wisconsin-based stoner band Bongzilla along for the ride. Boris is a band that I had been meaning to check out for a long time, but they seemed to tour fairly frequently, so it never seemed urgent to catch one of their shows. But the stars mostly aligned, so I grabbed a ticket a couple weeks ago. I'm glad I did - the show ultimately sold out despite some other concerts around town that would seemingly compete for the same audience. But was it worth it?

Friday is here again, praise Ozzy! My picks for the week is light on new albums actually released today, because to be blunt, a lot of what I checked out today simply didn't work for me. That said, this gives me an opportunity to promote some new singles and recent releases I missed from the last few weeks. 

I am a pretty obsessive tracker. I record every show I see on Concert Archives, movies I watch on Letterboxd, records I own on Discogs, and of course I have multiple spreadsheets and apps for my workouts. Of course, I have to track the songs I listen to as well, for which I use Last.fm. As you can see, I'm getting pretty close to 100,000 scrobbles (Last.fm speak for "songs listened to"), and my obsessive nature has me itching to get to that completely pointless milestone.

For someone who is so obsessed with music, 15 scrobbles a day is pretty low. That's only partially due to the fact that I listen to a lot of music where tracks that are 10-25 minutes long are the norm. The rest is because of the age of my account. I've been using Last.fm consistently for the last eight years. But I actually signed up for it nine years earlier, back in 2009. I don't exactly recall what happened, but it looks like I used it to track 330 songs back in 2009, then completely forgot all about it until the very end of 2017 (which is when, as a Google Music/YouTube Music user, I got jealous of Spotify's annual stats). I've been using it consistently since then, but my account has a full seven years of inactivity. All those years of zero tracks really pulls the daily average down. 

My actual daily average is more like 30-40 songs, which would be even higher if I didn't have to do stupid things like "go to meetings" or "live my actual life." That's no where near high enough to get to 100k tracks before the end of the year - I'd need more like 60-70 tracks per day, and there's only so much grindcore out there. But I figure I can get there by February or so, when I'll begin by annual project of listening to an album I've never heard before each day of the month. And once I hit that 100k goal? Onto the next completely meaningless goal, I suppose. Maybe I'll focus on trying to fix that daily average count. 

If you're at all interested in fitness, you've at least pondered the question of how to get lean. Jeff Cavaliere has tips on how to get lean and stay lean in the video above. And he should know - the guy has the body fat of a frickin' corpse. I've written before about how important Jeff and his Athlean-X program has been to my personal fitness journey, and this video is a good example of why. It's full of actionable tips, light on BS, and devoid of the bro-y crap in so much fitness content. It's good stuff. Watch it today or bookmark it for later.