D's Notebook

Month: April 2013 (Page 2 of 2)

Worst Song Ever

April 4, 2013 /

Another great series at the AV Club is Hate Song, where they invite artists to talk about a popular song that they hate. Duh.

The latest entry, which features Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio,1 just happens to focus on my least favorite song ever, “Two Princess” by the Spin Doctors.

Holy crap do I hate that song. Why? Because it never went away. Nearly two full years after the first time I heard it, the local generic “hits” station in Kansas City,2 would play it endlessly. Now this wasn't a station I would normally, or ever, listen to on my own accord. But at my job, which was in a warehouse, it was the station that was usually piped into the work area all day. In the summer of 1994, they played this damn song constantly. It was not unusual to hear it every 90 minutes, all day long. Worse was when there was a change in DJs, which apparently also reset the clock on when they could play it again. Because I know, with absolute certainty, there were several times when I heard it twice in less than an hour.

Again, this was THREE YEARS after the album on which it appeared had been released, and over a year after the song charted on the Billboard Top 40. But it had the hippy, faux-alternative sound that appealed to far too many people, and the ad wizards who made the playlists at 93.3 insisted pumping it out as often as possible.

It was a horrible song to begin with. And then a shitty radio station in Kansas City tried to push me over the edge to pure madness by treating it as though it was “Yesterday” or “Imagine” or some other classic track by McCartney or Lennon.

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  1. A band I know absolutely nothing about. ↩
  2. 93.3 FM, I believe it was called Mix 93 at the time. Or maybe Mixxx 93. ↩

Kid Talk

April 4, 2013 /

Vacation Notebook Leftovers

On the way to school today, M. and C. were talking about their ages. M. first said, “C.. How weird is it that next year I’ll be 10 and you’ll be eight?”

C.’s eyes gleamed as she considered it. “Wow, that will be weird. It’s like we’re skipping a year!”

Sometimes I love the way she thinks.

The conversation continued for awhile before C. dropped this nugget.

“M.. When I turn seven, I’m going to be on your tail!”

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her grinning mischievously. I think she just meant that for two-plus months she will be seven and M. will still be eight, so it will sound like they’re closer in age than they really are. Still, made me laugh.

That made me remember I have a couple things still written down from Spring Break I have not shared.

M. isn’t afraid of talking to anyone who will listen to her. One day at the pool she started talking to a boy that was five or six. Soon he was following her around, and eventually he trailed all three girls. Each time they would disappear to another pool, the restroom, etc. he would walk over to me and ask, “Where are the other sisters at?” He could never master their names so just referred to them as “the other sisters” all day.

Later L. found a boy about her age and they played together for awhile. Once when I swam by to check on them, the boy came right up to me and asked, “Have we met yet?”

I laughed and said, “I don’t think so. I’m L.’s dad.”

“OK,” he responded, “now we have,” and swam back to her.

Later L. was climbing on my shoulders and making me swim around as her motorcycle. The boy latched on to me at one point and I heard a mom yelling down that he needed to stop it. I glanced over and saw that his mom was one of the few younger moms at the pool, and filled out her bikini rather nicely.

“Oh, it’s ok,” I said to her. “He’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

The “How you doin’?’ was not said but clearly implied.

M. and C. both have Ninetendo DSes while L. is still rocking the Leapster. L. does like to play on the DS when one of her sisters give her a chance, though. One night she was hankering to play Scooby Doo and found an interesting way to get permission.

“C.?!” she said. “Do you want to play on my Leapster?”

“Sure.”

L. handed her Leapster over and stood silent for a moment. Finally she asked, “OK, now where is your DS?”

Finally, I’ve documented before how L. has some serious Tomboy tendencies. The love of Spiderman and tools and the preference for hanging out with boys at school. Right before we left town she told me that T. in her class liked to follow her around. At Dad’s Night, as soon as we walked into the classroom, T. came over and started trailing L. with a goofy grin on his face. If they were 14 and not 4, you would think he was head over heels about L..

On our drive to Florida S. asked L. about having so many boy friends at school.

“All the boys love you, L., don’t they?”

L. paused for a second, thought about it, and finally said, “Wellllll, not all the boys love me.”

Just most of them.

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Spy Vs. Spy

April 3, 2013 /

Last month I shared the list of TV shows I have been watching this year. As I kind of expected, there has been a big change in how I rank those shows. I finally got all caught up on “The Americans” and it is now the show I look forward to and enjoy the most each week. Since it’s still new and “Parks & Recreation” gets some love for lifetime achievement, I’ll rank the shows as co-#1’s for now.

The AV Club has a nice little Q&A with Matthew Rhys, the actor who plays Philip Jennings, today. Learning that he is Welsh makes me like him and the show even more.

So if you haven’t started watching yet, I almost insist that you do. It is so well done in every way. After taking a week off, “The Americans” returns tonight on F/X.

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Swing Batter

April 2, 2013 /

The columns always come this time of year. The celebrations of baseball’s return, somewhere in which each writer must suggest that Opening Day1 should be declared a national holiday so no one has to miss their favorite team’s opener.

Apparently whoever makes the schedule at St. P’s is a baseball fan, because M. and C. were off yesterday. Oh, some of you might suggest that the combination of Easter Monday and a Catholic school had more to do with it. But I know the truth. The good folks in the office wanted to make sure they, and the kids, could all watch the Cubs or Reds or whoever play uninterrupted yesterday.

In this endless winter2 it felt very good to fire up MLB.TV on the Mac and MLB At Bat later in the day on the iPad and iPhone to follow games. I watched some of the Marlins-Nationals game early, somehow missing both Bryce Harper home runs, and then listened to much of the Royals-White Sox game. We went out for dinner and after returning I was able to watch the final two innings of the 13-inning contest between the Angels and Reds on our local FSN affiliate. After that I caught a couple innings of the Phillies-Braves on ESPN and then watched the first inning of the Cardinals-Diamondbacks before heading to bed. That, my friends, is a good day.

I’d love to write that this was the season in which the Royals are finally going to break through. But, as I wrote after the big trade with Tampa back in December, I don’t think they’ve made the right moves since last season. They will be better, yes. But between their schedule, which is incredibly tough for the first 2+ months of the season, and the truth that they are still far behind the true contenders of the American League, I think it’s going to ultimately be a frustrating year. They may win more games than they’ve won in 20 years, but I don’t think it will be enough to crack the post-season.

And now my obligatory, barely researched picks for who will be playing in the post-season next October.

American League

East: Tampa Bay
Central: Detroit
West: Texas
Wild Cards: Anaheim, Toronto

Toronto over Anaheim
Detroit over Toronto
Tampa Bay over Texas
Tampa Bay over Detroit

National League

East: Washington
Central: Cincinnati
West: Los Angeles
Wild Cards: Atlanta and St. Louis

Atlanta over St. Louis
Washington over Atlanta
Cincinnati over Los Angeles
Washington over Cincinnati

World Series

Washington over Tampa Bay

Who would have expected that to be a reasonable pick five years ago?

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  1. And, as every writer must point out, Opening Day must be capitalized. ↩
  2. It barely nudged into the 40s here yesterday, and there is still a big pile of snow out in our front yard from last week’s plowing. But I can’t complain about the weather since we fled town twice this season. ↩

The End

April 1, 2013 /

Well, I admit, despite my assertions that I was fulfilled by KU’s accomplishments coming into the NCAA tournament and would not sweat their performance, I could not avoid my compulsory 24 hours of sadness after their meltdown late Friday night.

The endless replaying of the last 2:00 of regulation and the final moments of overtime. The questioning of decisions by players on the court and by Bill Self on the bench. The thinking ahead and wondering what that loss cost KU. The comparing the negative feelings of Friday to those of two years ago, or three years ago, or six years ago, and so on to decide which hurt worse. I tossed and turned that night and woke Saturday as I almost always do after KU’s season ends, wondering if it was all a bad dream and then trying to come to terms with the truth that the season was really over. And then I spent the day doing my best not to talk to my chatty daughters while I pouted until that 24-hour window closed.1

When I woke up Sunday, things were mostly good. I could, again, appreciate that a team with a lot of talent but many, many flaws, accomplished a ton this year. It was so much fun watching Jeff Withey dominate the inside as few players do any more. It was a privilege watching Ben McLemore, one of the three or four most talented players to wear a Jayhawks uniform in my life. Kevin Young made me laugh almost every time he was on the court. As a KC native, Travis Releford will always be my guy, and was such an important part of many great wins the past two years. And while Elijah Johnson probably took Tyshawn Taylor off the hook as most maddening good KU player ever, he had a game for the ages in Ames and, despite is many flaws, helped the team more than he hurt them. I think.

I was wrong at the beginning of the season. I said this year would be a bridge year in between extended runs of excellence. It was far from a bridge year. It was that last, great year where guys who were role players for one, two, three years had their chance to shine. Next year will be the bridge year, the rebuilding year, whatever you want to call it. The great thing about KU basketball is these years don’t come around very often. And when they do, the teams are usually still damn good.

Next year’s squad will probably take some lumps early with games against Duke and perhaps Michigan State sprinkled amongst another schedule that has more solid tournament teams than cupcakes. But by February, everyone will be talking about how Bill Self has done it again and KU is a young team no one wants to see in their bracket in March.

This was a great year that feels like it ended too early, but was probably more than most of us expected in November.

So, one last time for the 2012-13 season,

Rock Chalk, bitches.

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  1. It was a Father Of The Year performance, I promise you. ↩
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