The always entertaining, much anticipated B. family Christmas review.
So the girls were wound up last week. Actually, they were about ten steps beyond wound up. A long week of no school with sub-freezing temperatures meant they had been cramped up in the house. Threats about Santa skipping the home of girls who didn’t listen to their parents didn’t work anymore. They were getting too many sweets each day, there were too many guests, and there just wasn’t enough running room in the house to get all that energy out.
I don’t remember when I figured the whole Santa thing out. I’m guessing it was in the first-second grade range, which seems about right for most kids who are either only children or the oldest kid in their family. I do know that outwardly I was sure to keep believing for at least a year or two after the shades were lifted.
In my family, we had both family presents and Santa presents.
Finally, it happened. And again I went to bed about 20 minutes too early and missed the immediate buzz.
The Royals sent Zack Greinke (and Yuniesky Betancourt) to Milwaukee for a package of four young players. When I worked through my Twitter feed Sunday morning, I was flooded with news of the trade. First were the rumors, which began just after I went to bed Saturday night. As I caught up to real time, the news was getting locked in.
As the numbers get smaller, the hits get bigger!
Here we are. The end of another year. I’ve listened to a lot of music over the past 11 1/2 months. iTunes tells me I’ve added over 700 songs over that period. I would guess that I’ve sampled well over twice that number, often giving songs a listen or two and if they didn’t meet my stringent standards, I chucked them aside.
And now for part two of my year-end list of favorite songs.
20 - “Twice If You’re Lucky” - Crowded House. Anytime Neil Finn releases an album, he gets a spot in my year-end countdown. This track claims his spot for 2010, another in his long line of perfect pop pieces. I think he can roll out of bed and write two of these without any effort.
19 - “Sleep Forever” - Crocodiles.
’Tis the season for year end lists. I’ve been blogging for seven years now, and each December I’ve posted a list of my favorite songs of the previous year.
Why mess with a good thing?
Here are my 20 favorite songs of 2010 . Not necessarily the best or the most played in my iTunes library,1 but the ones from which I squeezed the most enjoyment.
I don’t know what it says about my selections this year, but few of these songs have official videos.
For some reason, I get crazy about baseball in the off-season. Perhaps it is because in baseball, an active off-season can transform a franchise. There is always that hope that perhaps the Royals might make an interesting, intelligent signing or trade that could put the post-season within reach. Or maybe it’s the drama of how the rich teams will divide up all the free agent talent, wondering who will find the right mix of performance for dollars and actually benefit from all their spending.
High school basketball is in full swing in Indiana now. The girls have been playing for almost a month and all the boys teams across the state now have games under their belts.
Friday night I covered my first boys game of the year. It was a lot of fun and was another first in my career.
The game started with the visitors, who were not my team, jumping to an 11-2 lead.
A bit of a light month, between my pseudo-novel writing and basketball season beginning. I’ll probably match my November total by Monday.
Badasses: The Legend of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death, and John Madden’s Oakland Raiders - Peter Richmond. This is a terrific look back at the legendary Oakland Raiders teams of the 1970s. It explores their entire history up until 1980 or so, with a focus on the pains of three-straight AFC championship losses before the Raiders finally got over the hump and won Super Bowl XI.
As promised, and I’m sure you are all nervous with anticipation, some general thoughts and reflections and musings on my NaNoWriMo experience.
First off, the 50,000 words came quite easily. I stuck close to the suggested daily word count, which worked for my rather open-ended story idea and daily schedule, but each time I sat down and focused on my story, I could pretty easily get 1000-1500 words knocked out in 30-45 minutes.
Wrapping up the weekend while watching the predictable destruction of the Colts by San Diego.1
First off, we had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving, and hope you did, too. We had 20 people in our home Thursday for dinner. I cooked two turkey breasts2, brought in a ham, and then added the usual trimmings. Other than that mad dash in the last hour to try to get everything cooked and warmed in one oven, I thought we pulled it off successfully.
It’s hoops season, bitches.
One more week of half-assed posting while I write my “novel.” 40,000 words down; 10,000 to go.
I hit a couple games in the county girls tournament last week. One was a blowout, as expected. It was 10-0 after a minute and never got closer. The other looked like a great match-up on paper. It was a dud. Both teams played like ass. The team that won has a lot of talent, but just play ugly.
A few Monday notes to kick off the week.
Today I should cross over the halfway point in my NaNoWriMo project, keeping me exactly on schedule. Last night I got up to 24,491 words, which according to the stats-o-matic tracker on the NaNoWriMo site, would have me finishing one day early if I continue my pace. NFL. Who in the heck is the best team in the league? The answer was Pittsburgh coming into this week, and then New England made them look silly last night.
A few years ago, a friend of mine instituted a New Man Plan for the New Year. It was his clever name for the annual adjustment in eating and drinking habits, workout regimen, etc. most of us start January with. I’ve always liked that name, and use it anytime I’m making even minor changes in my life.
It might be early, but I seem to have gone full-New Man Plan for November.
I slowed down a little last month. Not much, though.
The Shallows - What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains - Nicholas Carr. The internet and high tech are changing the way we access information. And anyone who spends even a little time surfing the net has stories about how their attention span seems to be shrinking, or how they can read something on their computer screen and have trouble retaining it afterwards.
The next installment in the AV Club’s look back at 90s music is up, this time focusing on my favorite band of the era, Pearl Jam. It’s a fair and comprehensive look at the band’s creative highpoint: 1992-1995. I still love them, and buy each new album as soon as it’s released. But there’s no doubting they’ve been, mostly, cruising along for 15 years without much heavy lifting.
It is sobering to read through the comments and see the one that says, “My dad is a huge Pearl Jam fan…” Yikes!
I’m going to try something new for the next 30 days. It’s actually something I wanted to do a year ago, but I got sidetracked in my three-month journey that was reading Infinite Jest. I’m finally going to give National Novel Writing Month (Or NaNoWriMo to the kids) a shot.
The idea behind NaNoWriMo is that anyone can write a novel, you just need a strict plan and lots of encouragement.
Much to my generation’s chagrin, Michael Jordan has not aged well. He came back one time too many, and when he finally left the league was a rather ordinary professional baller. Since his retirement, he’s had mixed success, at best, as an NBA executive. He offered a mean, bitter Hall of Fame induction speech. And he seems to be constantly cruising the party circuit with younger women. Kind of a dirty old man, not what we expected of the allegedly regal Jordan of his prime.
I’ve had a draft sitting around for awhile that I was unsure whether to post or not. In fact, I think I have three different versions of it sitting on my hard drive.
The New York Time’s Nicholas Kristof had a terrific story in last weekend’s Magazine about international philanthropy. Kristof was one of the people who worked hard to raise awareness of the Darfur genocide and continues to write about similar issues.
Even without a Colts game to suck up time, it was a solid sports weekend.
I covered an opening round football playoff game Friday. It was a blowout, but the coach I spoke with seems like a good guy and is struggling to turn around his alma mater. It was interesting to listen in as he spoke to his team for nearly 20 minutes on the field after the game, laying out a plan for the offseason.
Let’s cross some more T’s and dot some more I’s. Or whatever. In other words, clearing out some of the junk in my head.
High school football playoffs start tonight in Indiana. I’m assigned to what I expect to be a big blowout, with my team on the short end. Several of our teams have tough games in the first round, so there’s a decent chance this will be my last week covering football.
So does McSweeneys.
Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff'rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn't it? It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers
It’s already Thursday and I’ve yet to post anything? Weird. I’ll blame the nice weather and the time we’ve been spending outside. Also, I’m contemplating a post about Turner Gill, but struggling with how/what to write. Trust me, there will be something about Turner here soon.
In the meantime, here’s a fascinating article from a series at the Onion’s AV Club about 90s music. In this edition, the author examines the relationship between Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain during the period in which alternative rock rose to prominence.
Recently I picked up a copy of Def Leppard’s seminal 1983 album Pyromania. I had been waiting for years for it to show up in the iTunes or Amazon MP3 stores, to no avail. After hearing a couple songs in the pregame mix at a high school football game, I thought it was time to finally take the plunge and order the CD.
This was a big deal. First, I don’t buy CDs anymore.
I’ve mentioned poor EHS several times when sharing my sports reporting exploits. They are the team that had A) a seven-year losing streak and B) have won only five games in the past decade. It was my week to draw the short straw1 and for the first time, I headed down to cover one of their games.
It promised to be a long night. The previous week they played, and beat, the only school they’ve defeated in the past ten years.
It’s tough for dads to be one of the girls.
We go to the park; it’s me and the moms. We go to the Target, it’s me and the nannies. This is my reality. And it drives me nuts when people feel the need to make a big deal of it. This quote is from a recent Matt Villano column in the New York Times Magazine’s parenting section. Since NYT articles tend to disappear behind a log-in wall after a few days, the gist is a stay-at-home dad takes his daughter to a library event, and everyone makes a fuss over him being the only dad there.
I was in the zone. I was crushing books, knocking them out at better than a book-a-week pace. Then I ran into a wall. I still got some things done last month.
The 80-Yard Run: A Twenty-Week, Coast-to-Coast Quest for the Heart of High School Football - Theron Hopkins. A buddy who is deeply involved in high school football recommended this awhile back. The author takes a trip around the country over the course of a fall, each week profiling a different high school football program.
I’ve been busy working so far this fall, if you call getting out once a week busy. So if you’re interested in what I’ve been doing, plunge in for some navel-gazing.
I’ve covered four football games, a county championship tennis match, and am set to cover both tennis and football again this week.
Three of the four weeks I’ve covered football, I’ve followed the same team, WHS. They were expected to be quite good this year, but the first two games I saw they lost.
The Onion nails it.
1 in 5 Americans Believe Obama is a Cactus
”I don't care what he says or what his people say or what anybody else says," 48-year-old Kansas resident Jake Nolan told reporters. "The guy's a cactus, plain and simple. I mean, Christ, look at him."
As I believe I mentioned before, I recently went through a bit of a David Lee Roth-era Van Halen phase. For a couple weeks their songs were in high rotation on my various digital music devices.
That got me thinking. How would I rank the DLR songs? More to the point, what are my five favorite DLR songs?1 Purely subjective and subject to change, of course.
“Runnin' With the Devil” - The first single that the band wrote, it was a minor hit.