Tuesday, February 28, 2012
I suppose it says volumes of the Timothy Dalton era that it’s taken me nearly three months to watch his two movies. In my defense the holidays, and the Christmas movie season, were right in the middle of that stretch. And the copy of The Living Daylights our library has is scratched so badly the disk does not play after 45 minutes. But still, there was not much enthusiasm about getting through these two films.
Monday, February 27, 2012
And thus, it ends. This isn’t going to be another post rehashing the hows and whys of the end of the Kansas-Missouri rivalry. I’m not going to advocate for the continuation of it, nor argue who is more at fault for its demise. No, this post is about that special feeling you get each year when the schedule comes out and you circle the dates your school plays your arch rival.
Friday, February 24, 2012
I don’t spend a lot of time playing games on my iPad or iPhone. I’ll buy a handful each year and maybe get really interested in a couple of them. It’s rare that a game captures my imagination for more than a couple days. But for the last three weeks, I’ve been loving Armor Games' Kingdom Rush. I bought it despite several Internet warnings that it was hopelessly addictive. I can report, after three weeks or nearly constant play, that is absolutely true.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
It’s been a big few days for C.. Last Monday she lost her first tooth, her upper left incisor. It had reached that crazy, almost sickening level of looseness when S. finally reached over and yanked it out. There was a scream of surprise then much happiness. Even more happiness the next morning when she found the Tooth Fairy’s gift. The upper right incisor looked to be about ready, too. It hung in a few more days, and when I picked C.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Yes, I’m biased, but I love Nick Collison. He’s pushing ten years in the NBA and, while he was a great college player, I’m not sure anyone expected that kind of pro career for him. And I’ve always enjoyed his thoughtful take on things. He is blogging for GQ magazine on what life is like for a role-player in the NBA. His latest entry addresses finding your niche. It’s something every player who gets drafted should read, because not everyone turns into the next LeBron.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
You may recall that I took a crack at running a separate blog dedicated to my musings on Apple and technology. Like many of my Internet dreams,1 it seemed like a great idea but in practice wasn’t such a huge success. Turns out it’s hard to write every day about the same subject, especially when there are about 1000 people out there doing the exact same thing. I admire those who can find something to focus their writing each day.
Monday, February 20, 2012
There was a common theme to the basketball games I cared about over the weekend. Friday the team I covered won their game by 35 points. In an amazing comeback over the past three weeks, my teams are now up to a +7 TMF. I get to cover the #2 team in class 2A this week, so hopefully that improves some more. Saturday KU won by 33. And Sunday, in the first NBA game I’ve attended since 2003 (I think), the Pacers waxed Charlotte by 35.
Friday, February 17, 2012
This week kind of went off the rails yesterday, so I’m going to throw some bits-and-pieces that could have turned into longer, individual posts into a single grab bag to end the week. The biggest obstacle we faced this week came Thursday morning at approximately 3:30 am. I woke to hear the smoke alarms and cable backup box chirping and seeing strange flashes of light out the windows. After a few moments I realized the power had gone out.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
A few weeks back we donated an aging piece of furniture to AmVets. Hopefully they’ve made good use of the ugly but insanely comfortable, 40-year-old corduroy chair that my wife was finally able to purge from our home. For some reason, M. thought of that this morning as she was getting ready for school. She asked who it was that came to pick it up. Here is our conversation, as I remember it.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Saturday was another sad night for us children of the 80s. Whitney Houston’s death wasn’t a huge surprise; we all saw the way she lived. The surprise was that this didn’t happen a decade ago. Yet it is still a little chilling when someone who was such a big part of your youth dies before we think they should. This isn’t going to be a long ode to Whitney. As a fan of Top 40 music, I liked her a lot from her debut until 1988 or so.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
So S. and I are in the basement this afternoon, installing the final piece of our new entertainment system. We hear arguing upstairs. After it escalates, I head their direction to stop the nonsense. On my way up, I hear C., in tears, yelling at M.. M. responds, in her ‘I’m not really sorry’ voice, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.” C. shrieks back at her, “THEN YOU NEED TO GET NEW EARS!
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Some posts are a form of therapy for me. This is one of those. Below, I’ll explain why I didn’t watch the Kansas-Missouri game Saturday, which will also explain the why I’ve hardly watched any KU games this year. Basically, I’ve become an old man and can’t handle the highs and lows of basketball the way I used to. I want to point out this has nothing to do with this year’s team, and with the perception that this is a down year.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Indianapolis' week in the national spotlight is over, and it ends with the city looking very good. That’s the beauty of low expectations: you assume there will be snow and ice and sub-freezing temperatures and when you get sun and temps in the 50s all week, it seems like the best week ever. Downtown was flooded with friendly locals. The out-of-towners were pleased that pretty much everything worth doing was a short walk from wherever they were at the moment.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Just when you thought the Peyton Manning drama was going to fade for a few days, yesterday’s news that he has been medically cleared to play again hits and all hell breaks loose. That’s about a 2000 word post by itself, in which we could explore his motivations for having that news released during Super Bowl week, what it means for the Colts' administration, and so on. But I’ll cut to the chase: it changes nothing for the Colts.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
One of the greatest of the many gifts my parents gave me was my appreciation for music. Part of my musical education was our weekly, family viewing of Soul Train. For a white kid growing up in a small, Kansas college town, the show opened my eyes to not only a different kind of music than was commonly played in Hays, KS1, but also to the broader world in general. There were people out there who looked different than me, talked different than me, dressed different than me.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
By all accounts, events downtown are going swimmingly. The locals have shown up in force, setting attendance records for the official NFL events. The weather has been great. My fears, that the national press would be ripping the choice of Indy as a Super Bowl host, have so far not come to fruition. In fact, many national writers seem smitten with the city so far. But, strangely, all that is secondary to the looming resolution of the thing on most local football fans' minds.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
<p>In case you’ve been wondering who this <a href=“http://www.wussy.org/">Wussy</a> band is that has topped my listening stats each of the last two weeks, here’s a mini-review of their latest album, <em>Strawberry</em>.</p> <p>I’ve been a fan of Wussy for several years. The Cincinnati band was long a staple of <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOXY.com">WOXY</a>'s playlists back when the station was A) still in Cincy and B) still broadcasting. But until a couple weeks ago I had only listened to individual Wussy tracks rather than an entire album.
Monday, January 30, 2012
When the new Giants/Jets stadium was constructed, without a roof, and New York was awarded the 2014 Super Bowl, plenty of people talked about how great it would be if a Super Bowl was played in true winter conditions. Like a playoff game in Green Bay or Chicago, why shouldn’t the NFC championship be decided in the elements. While there were some naysayers (“Why should the title come down to a kicker slipping in icy conditions?
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Greetings fellow citizens. I am here to talk about the State of the Blog. I can report that the State of the Blog is changed. Read on for the news. It’s been a whole five months or something, thus it was time to implement some changes to Ye Olde Blog. I’ve bored you in the past (if you’ve chosen to read through such posts) explaining why I changed this or that.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
This is a terrific article on several levels. It examines some of the inside story of the development of the iPhone. It points out fundamental demographic advantages that China has over the U.S. And it gets into the potential moral delimma Apple, and other successful US technology companies, has when balancing profitability, share owner value, and the needs of the American worker. Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
My nearly eight years as a stay-at-home parent have been filled with humorous moments that come with being the rare dad who is with his kids all day. Random kids who come up and start telling me about their potty habits. Boys who mistake me for their dad because I’m the only guy around. And, my personal favorite, kids yanking down their mothers' shirts while I’m talking to them. Friday, L.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Indianapolis is now on the clock in two ways. Sure, there’s the countdown to April’s NFL Draft. And now, with the conference championship games out of the way, the final countdown for the Super Bowl is on. In two weeks, a city where you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays1 will host America’s biggest single-day sporting event. Anyway, a couple of great games on Sunday. Perhaps not artistic masterpieces, but tremendously entertaining.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The hypocrisy that permeates big-money college sports takes your breath away. College football and men’s basketball have become such huge commercial enterprises that together they generate more than $6 billion in annual revenue, more than the National Basketball Association…And what does the labor force that makes it possible for coaches to earn millions, and causes marketers to spend billions, get? Nothing. The workers are supposed to be content with a scholarship that does not even cover the full cost of attending college.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
First off, the Saints-49ers game last Saturday was fantastic if you were just an unaffiliated person watching. I imagine it was fun for San Francisco fans, too. The terrific early performance by the ‘Niners’ D. The inevitable Saints comeback. And the frenetic final four minutes. Great, great stuff. The Colts are making progress. First, the Polians were shown the door and Ryan Grigson was brought in to remake the franchise. Yesterday, Grigson fired coach Jim Caldwell.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Perhaps no one has noticed, but I have yet to write anything lengthy about KU basketball this season. There are a couple reasons for that - which I’ll get into in another post at some point - but the bottom line is I have a different relationship with the team and with college basketball in general this year. In fact, Monday’s game against Baylor was the first game I watched from start-to-finish all season.
Friday, January 13, 2012
We lost a dear friend yesterday. C.’s fish, Spike, passed on to the great fishbowl in the sky. It was not unexpected, as he hadn’t been right for months. That didn’t make the loss any easier for her. He had always been an odd fish, but since the fall he spent most of his time curled up on the bottom of his bowl. While his brother Sparkle would swim around and eat his food as soon as we put it in his bowl, Spike just sat in the rocks.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
So, I ’m kind of late on this, since the BCS title game was Monday and all, but I might as well get it off my chest. I think the BCS is a gigantic scam. Now hold on. Before you go clicking somewhere else, thinking to yourself, “Of course it’s a scam. You’re just now seeing that?” allow me to clarify. I’m a long-time BCS hater. I remember one night in late 2003, while traveling for business, I couldn’t sleep because I was so wound up mentally drafting an anti-BCS post.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Finally, the holidays are over. M. is back in school today, which means we get to work our way back into our normal routine. She reminded me last night that I utterly failed at the one thing I wanted to accomplish with her over the break: master tying her shoes. Oh well, she’s waited this long. It won’t kill her to put it off another month. She can read a 150 page book in a night, but she can’t tie her own shoes.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
The Lawrence Journal-World just completed their reader-driven contest to determine the best KU basketball player of the last decade. Weird timing, yes, since apparently everything that happened in the spring of 2000 gets pushed back to the 90s. But fun anyway. Some thoughts. It was interesting looking at their brackets - they went position-by-position - and realizing how unique KU’s pool of talent over that period was. Until a year ago, no one had left after a single season in Lawrence.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Over the weekend, word leaked that MLB was considering a plan that would dramatically reshape the game. One team would move from the National to American league, leaving two, 15 team leagues. Then, all divisions would be scrapped and the teams in each league would compete for five post-season slots. I think this is horrible news, and not for the reasons you would expect. I think it’s horrible because it’s a great idea, yet most insiders feel it has little chance of actually being adopted.