D's Notebook

Month: December 2014 (Page 4 of 4)

Favorite Songs Of 2014, #19

December 8, 2014 /

“I Got Knocked Down (But I’ll Get Up)” – School Of Seven Bells covering Joey Ramone

Normally I disqualify covers from my year end lists. But occasionally I make an exception.

And no, it’s not a cover of THAT song.

Rather, this is a wonderful cover of a song that Joey Ramone wrote while he was battling lymphoma, a disease that would eventually kill him. School of Seven Bells founding member Benjamin Curtis was diagnosed with the same disease in 2013. He recorded this song while hospitalized for treatment, connecting with vocalist Alejandra Deheza via FaceTime. Curtis played in his hospital room, she sang in the studio, and he directed her on how to adjust the recording equipment to get the sound he wanted.

Curtis died last December 29. This was released last June, a powerful and emotional last single by a band that made beautiful music.

Sitting in a hospital bed
Frustration going through my head
Turn off the TV set
Take some drugs so I can forget
I, I want life

Previously:
20 – “Black And White” – Parquet Courts

Favorite Songs Of 2014, #20

December 8, 2014 /

I know many of you have been waiting all year for this, and it is finally here. Yes, time to unveil my 20 favorite songs of the past year. Rather than share the entire list up front and then post videos/audio files and comments for each one, I’m going Casey Kasem on you and unveiling them one at a time.

Many of these were featured as Friday Vids over the past year, so some should be familiar. But others, like our first song, will be new to the blog.

So let’s kick things off with song #20 for 2014.

“Black And White” – Parquet Courts

The sound of New York in the summer time. Tense, on edge, your personality crushed by the weight of the city.

Do I bother to define myself beyond what they allow?
Have I already forgotten how?

⦿ Sunday Links

December 7, 2014 /

A lot of links to share since I didn’t get around to it last week.

First, what major city has the most unpredictable weather? Kansas City is No. 1, with Indy four spots behind.

Which City Has The Most Unpredictable Weather?

Joe Posnanski had a couple fine pieces of writing over the last two weeks. This one, profiling what life is like for former NFL player Priest Holmes, is wonderful and scary.

Real Life Or Fantasy

Chris Rock has done a lot of press in advance of his new movie. This conversation with Frank Rich was my favorite.

In Conversation: Chris Rock

And, hey!, Dave Chappelle is back being profound and funny again, too.

Dave Chappelle Is Back (This Time We’re 100% Sure It’s Maybe Totally for Real)

Next, two pieces about two groundbreaking women who were some of the first female reporters to get into professional sports locker rooms in the 1980s. Big takeaway: Reggie Jackson was always an ass.

Lisa Saxon: The Woman Who Helped Change Sports Writing Forever

My Life In The Locker Room: A Female Sportswriter Remembers The Dicks

I was a huge Kansas City Comets fan back in the glory days of the MISL. But I’ve largely forgotten about them. So this was a nice look back at the league that, for a couple years, was a bigger deal than the NBA in a lot of cities.

Sex, Soccer, and Videotape

Self explanatory.

74 Of The Most Amazing News Photos Of 2014

Finally, I really wish I had invented these. One of my favorite pastimes is to criticize the parking of others.

Congratulations, You Suck at Parking

Friday Vid

December 5, 2014 /


“Do They Know It’s Christmas” – Band Aid
We begin our three weeks of holiday songs with one of the more maligned songs in the modern Christmas song canon. Are the lyrics cheesy? Yes. Are some of the assertions about Africa factually incorrect? Yep? Is the drama cranked about a few notches too high? Of course.

But, come on. The New Wave/New Romantic sounds defined the pop music of the first half of the 1980s. And no song sums all that up better than this. For that alone, as a representation of the music of our youth, all us Gen Xers have to defend the song.

And a quick note about Bono’s line. Even when I was 13 and the song was new, I understood what he meant. Saying “…thank God it’s them, instead of you…” wasn’t a personal statement of relief. Rather, it was an indictment of western society turning its back on disasters in far-off places where the people suffering had dark skin. It was easier to ignore them and hope they go away and try to deal with the difficulties in our own lives. Until Bob Geldof and Midge Ure forced us to consider the famine in Ethiopia, that is.

I’m not saying it’s perfect. I love the song because, like I said, I was 13 when it came out. And you kind of always have to love things that happened when you were 13. But I also don’t think it’s a terrible song.

Now that new, 30th anniversary version? That’s a terrible song…

Early December Notes

December 4, 2014 /

Man, have we had trouble getting the girls to put Christmas lists together this year. In years past, we normally had detailed lists from all three well before Thanksgiving. Followed by daily updates.

This year, though, has been much harder. L. gave us a list about a week ago. C. and M. both started lists, but they kept disappearing or were never handed over. One day last week, when I asked the girls if they had their lists ready, M. snapped at me, “Why do you need to see it?”

She might know what’s up, but she sure ain’t rocking the boat and risking losing out on gifts.

I think part of the problem is that we have received almost no toy catalogs in the mail this year. It seems like Target usually sends out a big toy catalog the weekend after Halloween, and the girls spend the next couple days fighting over it as they mark the things they want. That catalog never came this year.

An unlikely helper finally got the girls in gear. All three girls took a liking to the Brookstone catalog that came over Thanksgiving break. By Sunday night we had lists from all three girls. Or, rather, all three girls handed me sealed envelopes addressed to Santa at the North Pole that I was supposed to put in the mailbox Monday morning.

When we looked at the lists that night, we cracked up. C. listed out 13 things, all from Brookstone. She was very precise in providing us with names. She wants a Crosley ® CD Jukebox. And an Aqua-Jet® Foot Spa. And several other items that she listed the brand name, followed by the ® sign. We thought that was all kinds of awesome.

M. was giving us problems because she kept asking for exactly three things, and none of them all that fun. Which bums me out a little. She might be down with Santa publicly, but I hate that she’s beginning to ask for practical gifts rather than “kid” things. We’ll see if and how this changes over the next couple weeks.

Each year I put together a picture calendar for us and that we give as a gift to the grandparents. It’s always fun to review all the pictures we took over the past year. I do notice that I’m taking fewer pictures than I used to. And I take almost no videos any more.

What I like the most is putting together the December page. I try to slap as many pictures from Christmases past as will fit. I love watching the girls change in 12-month increments on that page.

Finally, I let the girls watch Home Alone last night. Believe it or not, I had never seen it before, either. Since it came out when I was in college, I’m pretty sure I thought it was stupid at the time, and hated how it dominated pop culture for so long and made Macaulay Culkin a star.

So what did I think? I was a little surprised. I always had it in my mind that the entire movie was Culkin trying to keep Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern out of his home. So it was weird to me that all that was only a 15-20 minute stretch at the end.

A lot of the acting was poor. The first half draaaaaags. Culkin grated on me rather than charmed.

But the girls liked it, which I guess is the most important thing.

I was reading up on Home Alone today and it serves as another reminder of how much pop culture has changed in the last quarter-century. It was the #1 movie for 12 straight weeks, which rarely happens anymore. What is really crazy, though, is that it stayed in the top ten into April of 1991, and popped back into the top ten two more times that summer. So a movie that was released before Thanksgiving was still in theaters deep into the following summer. These days it would have been out on DVD and streaming video before Easter.

November Books

December 3, 2014 /

Another busy month. Four books, three of them good, two very good. I’ve been saying this for years, but I really should write down my thoughts on each one when I finish them, rather than waiting until the end of the month. My apologies for the disjointed thoughts and fuzzy memories on a couple of these.

The Facades – Eric Lundgren
This was the one book I did not enjoy, which was a bummer. I had been looking forward to reading this for about a year based on a review I read somewhere. Sadly, it did not match up to the image I had in my head based on that review.

I just went back and read a couple reviews, and a lot of folks loved it. To me, it meandered and was often confusing. I kept wanting to care about a character, but never did. The protagonist, Sven, is searching for his opera singer wife who disappeared without a trace after a performance. He’s not a suspect, but neither is he a sympathetic character. If you can’t invest in the main character, it’s tough to invest in the book.

Everything Changes – Jonathan Tropper
This was my quick, light read of the month. It is one of those books that feels like it was written with an eventual screenplay in mind. Here, Zachary King, is a 30-something guy living the good life in New York. He has a crappy job, but one that pays the bills. He lives, rent free, with his millionaire buddy. And he is engaged to a woman that is more than a few notches out of his league.

Ahhh, but everything changes. (Of course.) A doctor visit reveals a strange growth on his bladder. The times he spends with the widow of his best friend, who died in a car accident with Zach sitting next to him, are getting more intense. And his estranged father, who he has barely seen in his adult life, suddenly shows up again.

Things go out of control, then settle down exactly the way you think they will. An entertaining read, but not a “Best Of” candidate.

The Last Policeman – Ben H. Winters
Here was the surprise of the month. In combines elements of noir, mystery, sci-fi, and apocalyptic genres wonderfully.

It follows Hank Palace, a young detective in Concord, New Hampshire as he investigates what appears to be a simple suicide but, to him at least, shows inconsistencies that lead him to believe it was murder.

No one else really cares, though. That is because an asteroid, which was discovered just over a year ago, has emerged from behind the sun and is hurtling directly toward the Earth. Once scientists determined the asteroid was certain to impact Earth, day-to-day life changed dramatically. People stopped doing their jobs. The government cracked down on civil liberties to avoid wide-scale riots. Food and gas are severely rationed. Rumors swirl about safe havens on the moon. And, most disturbingly, many people, when they can’t take the stress of waiting for doom any longer, are killing themselves.

Palace charges forward, though, and unravels a beauty of a crime, one with numerous delightful twists and turns.

It’s a first-rate mystery, but Winters does well to slowly lay out the discovery of the asteroid and how the world reacts. For a child of the Cold War era, that slow, eerie terror is fun to read. And I really enjoyed the dilemma that faces everyone in this fictional world: do you continue to follow laws of state and morality in the face of possible extinction, or do you act on your every impulse?

Oh, and this is the first part of a trilogy! I can’t wait to get to book two.

May We Be Forgiven – A.M. Homes
I started this sometime last summer. But when I saw it began on Thanksgiving Day, I decided to shelve it until November. Which is kind of funny, because most of the nearly 500 pages take place in the year between two Thanksgivings, rather than on the actual holiday. Oh well.

I’m honestly not sure what to make of this book. The main character, Harold, goes to emotionally support his sister-in-law after his brother kills a family in a car accident. Then he sleeps with her. Then his brother, who snuck out of the hospital, catches them and kills his wife. When Harold’s wife learns of the murder while on business in China, he finds himself looking for a divorce attorney. And that’s the first 50 or so pages. It continues to get crazier and crazier.

So it seems like a big farce, a novel intent to make some statement about modern society or some such nonsense. Only the book turns and becomes positively sweet and tender over its final 100 pages or so.

I think I agree with a couple reviews I read after I finished the book. It’s terrifically written. It’s a lot of fun. Some parts of it are absolutely dazzling. But I was also left with questions about large portions of the book, too. And I’m not really sure how to sum it up. I think Homes wanted it to stand for something, but I’m not really sure what. I definitely recommend it, but feel like it just misses being a modern classic.

Holiday Jihad #1

December 2, 2014 /

Yes, that hallowed holiday tradition is back. It’s time for the first Holiday Jihad of 2014!

This one just baffles me. Last week I added my annual bookmark for the site Christmas TV Schedule, so I can be sure to record the best shows of the season. I scrolled through to find the highlights and noticed one show in particular was hard to find. I hit Command-F[1], typed in “Grinch,” and reviewed the results. Plenty of showings for the full-length movie starring Jim Carrey. But only one, on Christmas night, for the original cartoon.

Just to be safe, I did some more digging on the web. Sure enough, that is the only December showing of the cartoon. TBS did play it twice before Thanksgiving. But no other network or cable TV airings until the kids are coming down from their Christmas morning buzzes.

WTF?

How the hell do you show it twice in Novembe – once in the middle of the month – and not a single time in the first four weeks of December? It’s right up there with Rudolph and Frosty and Charlie Brown for classic, essential holiday cartoons. But apparently I have to either go buy the DVD or get it from Amazon or iTunes if we want to see it before Christmas night.

Unacceptable.

And for that, TBS and the rest of the major broadcast and cable networks earn my first Holiday Jihad of the year.

  1. Control-F to you PC users.  ↩

Thanksgiving Notes

December 1, 2014 /

So, I’m putting this together beginning at 10:40 Sunday night. Christmas Vacation is on TV. The tree is lit. A Bell’s Christmas Ale is at my side. Yes, it is the most wonderful time of the year.

Man, the holiday weekend went by fast. It seems like minutes ago we were out to eat on Wednesday night, watching basketball on the big screens, and thinking of all that the four days ahead held. Allow me to catch you up.

As my Facebook friends know, we made some controversial decisions Wednesday night. On our way home from dinner, M. said to her sisters, “We’ll get our tree on Friday and order pizza. It’s Dad’s Christmas tradition.”

A few minutes later, she asked if we could watch a Christmas movie when we got home. I reminded her that it was also my tradition not to watch Christmas movies, or listen to Christmas music, until after Thanksgiving.

“Most of your traditions are good, but that one is dumb, Dad,” she shot back.

So we watched Elf.

When we got to the part where Buddy moves in with the Hobbs family and he decorates their entire house, C. disappeared upstairs. A few minutes later she returned with a stack of paper and scissors. Soon she had a bunch of paper snowflakes and paper rings, just like Buddy. More confirmation that Buddy the Elf is just a giant eight-year-old.

Later that evening, I threw caution to the wind and decided to watch the Thanksgiving Orphans episode of Cheers the night before Thanksgiving, rather than on Thanksgiving night itself. Which makes sense. Watch it in preparation for the big day, rather than as a wrap-up.

Although, and this is crazy, the original episode aired on Thanksgiving night, 1986. I remember ER used to have big Thanksgiving episodes. Isn’t everything either football, a holiday special, or a rerun these days?

Thanksgiving was a fine day. Excellent food. Good company. No arguments amongst the family! As always, the girls began the day watching the Macy’s parade. I was busy in the kitchen most of the time, but if I can hazard a guess, M. was explaining everything to her sisters, C. was making observations that M. immediately shot down, and L. was cheering for Spider Man.

A big Thanksgiving tradition is for Elfie, our Elf on the Shelf, to show up. And he did, right on schedule, and the girls were very excited to receive him. C. wrote him a note over the weekend that said:

Dear Elfie. Do you now (sic) how to read and right (sic)? Do you want to be my pen pal?1

So, like a good dad, I wrote her a note back, left-handed of course. After she read it, C. to S., “Mom, Elfie has bad handwriting!”

Today I found a note from M. asking if he would be her pen pal too. L. needs to get on it.

Friday we went out not-so-bright and early to get our tree. Not-so-bright because it was cold with heavy, snowy clouds blocking the sun. We went to our usual spot, picked out our usual Fraser Fir, and only deviated from our routine when it came time to load the tree. For the past seven years, we’ve thrown it inside the minivan to bring it home. No van this year means it went on top of the SUV. Which really isn’t that big of a deal, but the girls thought it was pretty great.

We got the tree up and most of the decorations in place by that evening. The new outside decorations worked as planned, and made the girls happy. We still have a couple things to get set up but, for the most part, the decorating is complete.

Watched a lot of football and basketball. I watched every KU basketball game on delay, usually making generous use of the fast forward button during breaks. A solid weekend. The kids are growing up, but they still have a ways to go.

The capper to the weekend came on Sunday, when S. and I were the beneficiaries of some corporate largesse and attended the Colts game for free. In a suite!

I can’t think of a better game to go to. Some early worries, a big rebound, and tons of big plays. Much better than the last Colts game I went to, the final game of the Peyton Manning era.

One thing I thought was incredible was how loud Andrew Luck is barking out the snap count. We were about a third of the way up in the stands, straight up from the goal line. Even when the Colts were on the opposite 20, if they were facing us, we could hear Luck yelling out to his linemen. He’s pretty good throwing the ball, too. Although my step-dad told me he was overrated and terrible on Thanksgiving.

Hopefully each of you had fine weekends, too, and are now basking in the glory of the Christmas music season.

  1. Spelling errors left because they are still charming. ↩
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