Month: July 2016

Farewell to VHS

July 27, 2016 / DB

So after this month, no more VCRs will be produced. Wait, they were still making VCRs? I guess there are probably some folks out there with shelves full of movies – purchased or taped from TV, professional and personal – who were never interested in buying them all again in a digital format, or didn’t want to invest the time and effort to convert them to digital.

I know I still have some tapes stored in a cabinet in our basement. Some of those tapes hold great sentimental value, even if I haven’t watched them in 20 years or more. There is a single tape that holds the 1988 NCAA national championship game on it. After the game is a couple hours of post-game coverage from CBS, CNN, and local stations in Kansas City. And after that, I have random coverage of the parade to honor the newly crowned Kansas Jayhawks, speculation of whether Larry Brown would leave KU for UCLA, and other local sportscasts from that week. I think that tape is just about full. It would be fun to watch one more time.

But the video I’d most like to watch is one my buddy John N. and I made our junior year of high school. For our creative writing class we wrote and filmed a parody of the movie Colors, a dark, gritty look at the LA gang scene that starred Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. We loved that movie because it was probably one of the first mainstream feature films that embraced hip-hop culture. I’m not sure how well the movie has held up, but I bet I could listen to the soundtrack today and still love it.[1]

Anyway, we decided to make a suburban version of Colors, which we cleverly called Colours. Our version followed the major plot lines of the original, just dropped into our sleepy, Kansas City suburb. Instead of slinging rock, the drug of choice in our film was cherry Pez. We included a drive-by shooting and battles between the cops and gang members, only we used water guns rather than real weapons. There’s a dramatic scene in the real movie where, in the midst of a gun battle, the guns of a cop and gang member simultaneously jam as they aim at each other. They struggle to clear their weapons and reload so they can get the first shot off. We stole that scene too, but in our version the combatants ran out of water and had to dip their “water-type Uzis” in buckets to reload.

We filmed the whole thing in one afternoon following school. When one key “actor” failed to show, we sent a crew up to school to recruit someone who would shoot baskets for a few minutes then get blasted in a drive-by. So a sophomore none of us really knew had a bit part in this grand cinematic effort. We had parts of scenes get wiped out when our camera person forgot that her family’s video camera would back up 5 seconds each time she stopped filming.[2] But it ended up being pretty much what we wanted: funny and fun to do.

Looking back, I wonder how we didn’t get invitations for immediate entrance into the USC film school.

My favorite memory of Colours, though, came from our teacher. She had not seen the original movie, and in order to fairly grade our project, she thought she should. So she went to the theater with several viewings of our flick fresh in her mind. She told us later that people were staring at her in the theater because she was laughing out loud at appropriate times. She couldn’t help but think of our comedic take of certain scenes nor contain her laughter.

I believe we got A-’s.

I may need to find that tape and make sure it gets digitized before it’s too late.

I checked, it’s not on Spotify. I could only cobble together about half of the tracks from checking each artist. I bet I have it on cassette, though. ↩
WTF?!?! ↩

On @BotStove

July 26, 2016 / DB

We are deep into baseball’s silly season: the 7–10 days before the trade deadline. In the era of Twitter, fake “insiders,” who create accounts with names that look very similar to real “insiders” like Buster Olney and Tim Kirkjian, claim to break made-up deals that get the webz a buzzin’.

That made it the perfect time for this “profile” of an account set up to parody both the fake and legit writers who are peddling rumors.

Take a few minutes to get to know @BotStove.

Report: White Sox Desperate For … Ice Cream In Mini Helmets?

Of Birth Dates And Birth Orders

July 25, 2016 / DB

It’s a weird day in our house. Today is M’s 12th birthday, but she’s not here to celebrate. We dropped her off for her first-ever week at a summer camp yesterday. So our phones, or rather her phone, will not ring with calls from relatives looking to talk to her and wish her a happy birthday. There’s no special dinner planned for tonight, or cake for dessert. Kid birthdays are supposed to be big, all-encompassing days all about them but today our house is quiet. I guess this is a preview of life when the girls aren’t here anymore. Strange! We’ll celebrate when she gets home.

There was a hint in that first paragraph about M’s big gift: she got her first cell phone last Monday. An iPhone SE. We debated when and whether to get her a phone for a long time. We talked to friends and weighed their different perspectives on when you should hook your kid up. We settled on 12 and passing a safe baby sitting course as the requirements. She got certified last month. And she’s 12 today. We decided since she was going to be gone on her birthday, we’d go ahead and order it a little early. Plus we could change our data plan right as our Verizon billing month turned over.

We did make her sign a contract that lays down several rules and expectations. I’ve done my best to lock it down to keep her from getting herself into trouble. But all the parental controls in the world can’t get stop a kid who wants to misbehave. Fortunately M tends to follow rules and default to good behavior. Hopefully our trust will be rewarded.

One problem about giving her the phone early is that it’s arrival coincided with the hottest week of the year. None of us wanted to leave the house very often, and we all ended up spending too much time in front of screens of various sorts. I don’t know that I set the best baseline for her in that first week. But I also figured she gets the chance to go overboard at first, and then we’ll dial things back. I did get annoyed with the hourly request that she be allowed to download a new app. I gave her a few days to load her phone up, but by the weekend I told her just one new app per day. And thankfully when Pokeman Go asked for a parental email to open an account, it kept erroring off. So we’ve avoided that for the time being.

Twelve still seems a little early to me for a full-time phone. We have other friends who bought cheap phones for their kids and only hand them over when their daughters are babysitting or their kids are off to a practice/game/event without their parents. There’s a lot of appeal to that plan. But I also like the idea of her always having her phone and being comfortable using it if/when an emergency situation arises.

I guess it’s just a sign of the times.

She’s at a CYO camp about 90 minutes away through this Friday. She went for a night with her class in 4th grade[1] but this is her first time going off to summer camp. We waited this long because S went to summer camp when she was 12,[2] but a lot of M’s friends are at their 4th or 5th summer camp. Which ended up being kind of a bummer because a lot of them moved to a different camp this year. Still, she’s in a cabin with at least three of her classmates (one was supposed to be there but hadn’t arrived when we left). And she’s going to meet girls that she’ll play sports against for the next three years and many who she will end up going to high school with.

The great thing about the camp is it is about 15 minutes away from our lake house. So we went down to the lake early yesterday, took a few laps in the boat, visited some friends, and then popped down the road to drop her off. We had to walk, oh, two-thirds of a mile or so to get to her cabin. Up a couple steep hills. When the heat index was between 105 and 110. We were all sweating like beasts when we finally got to her cabin. After we were done, the rest of us went back to the lake to swim for another hour or so.

As for the birth order thing, M getting her phone wasn’t the only family event las week. I took L to the eye doctor on Thursday and after an exam, she got fitted for glasses. They should be in any day. She picked out Nike frames which, if you know L, are perfect. The optician liked that L had on a Nike shirt and new green Nike running shoes. She didn’t notice her adidas shorts I guess.

I hated when I got glasses. I remember people laughing at me the day I walked into my fourth grade class with glasses for the first time. And then there were all the jokes that came along with glasses back in the day. I guess my Bob Griese frames weren’t very cool.

But it seems like kids now like glasses, and you can get some pretty cool frames. So I think she was actually a little excited about getting them. Plus she’ll be happy not to have headaches at the end of the day anymore.

As for C…

I dropped her off at cross country practice last Thursday. On Thursdays the team does a light workout and then gets into a pool and does some exercises in there to cool down and rest the joints. As she hopped out of the car, we heard another parent saying, “Pool is closed, leave your swimsuit in the car.” Later found out there was a toddler poop incident that closed it down.

But that was just the beginning.

When she got home she ran into the house and said, “Dad! There was a naked man at cross country practice!”

Wait, what?

“He was on drugs and the police came to arrest him. Coach is going to send an email!”

Whoa.

I asked if she saw him and she said no. Or at least not until the cops showed up and took him out in cuffs with some shorts on.

I had a kickball meeting that night and the first thing one of the other parents said when I arrived was, “Did you hear about the naked guy at cross country?”

So the story trickled out that a dude smoked some synthetic marijuana that had been laced with acid in the 100-degree heat and then decided to nude up in the middle of a public park. He never offered any threat to the kids, so most of the parents laughed about it later. But because kids were present, apparently he gets his name put on the sex offender registry.

The coaches handled it great. After being warned what was going on, they hustled the kids away. I think most of the kids didn’t see any nudity, although they did see the cops come and take him away. The coaches, who knew that the older kids would pick up on what was going on and spread the word, closed practice with a teaching moment. The gist of it was that you shouldn’t do drugs because you’ll end up naked in the park and get arrested. Which is a pretty good lesson all around, when you think about it.

Classic middle kid, though. In the same week one sister gets a phone and another gets glasses, she has cross country practice ruined by a naked stoner.

Terrific marketing! ↩
The same camp, coincidentally. And her dad – M’s grandfather – went there too. ↩

R’s: The End of the Good Times?

July 21, 2016 / DB

It’s been awhile since I wrote about the Royals. The biggest reason for that is because the last time I wrote exclusively about them, they went in the shitter for the next week. My life without superstition would be empty and meaningless.

But here we are on July 21, the trade deadline is 10 days away, and the Royals sit 47–47, nine games out of first place, six games out of the Wild Card spot. After a slow start, Cleveland has looked like last year’s Royals for the past six weeks. It is Cleveland, so there’s always hope. But the Indians have every appearance of a team that’s going to run away and hide in the division.

The Wild Card race doesn’t hold much good news, either. The Royals only play teams ahead of them in the Wild Card race 12 times before the end of the year. The Royals may well get hot before the season is over, but there are limited opportunities to make those wins really count by hurting fellow Wild Card candidates.

Not that I have much hope that the Royals are going to get hot. Nothing has clicked this year. Too many significant injuries. Too much inconsistency at the plate and on the mound. And there’s just been a very different feel about the team. I hate to make assessments of player’s motivations without knowing them. This team just seems less focused than last year, though. There have been so many minor miscues that year that never happened last year. So many moments that needed a patient at-bat but received an overly aggressive set of hacks. Base running errors aplenty.

Every time they have a big, late inning comeback, I think, “This is it! This is the spark that will get them going!” And then they go out and look terrible the next night.

The easy answer is last year’s team was singularly focused on getting back to and winning the World Series. Even watching on TV you could almost feel the intensity late in games.

Maybe it was intensity. Maybe it was magic. Maybe it was an extraordinary run of good luck. Whatever it was, it feels like it’s gone.

So on the day the Royals go to the White House for the final official celebration of their World Series title, it also feels like a day to give up on getting back to the postseason for the third-straight year. Which is fine. I’ll absolutely trade last October for whatever comes next. I can deal with this year’s team not making the playoffs. But I was really hoping that if they fell short, it would be because the team faltered in September. Or because some other team got crazy hot late and the Royals just got beat by a better team. I didn’t want the hope to disappear in mid-July.

It also sucks because I haven’t been to a game in Kansas City in four years. A few weeks back I booked a trip for August and will get to go to the K for two games while there. I’ll still take a picture of myself next to the World Series trophy and enjoy seeing the team in person. But, man would it have been nice for the to be in the midst of the pennant chase and there be an extra charge in the air. My trip is four weeks away, so I guess it’s still possible, if unlikely.

Perhaps this is the Midwesterner in me speaking, but there’s also a part of me that feels like fans of other teams will use this as an argument against last year’s team. “I told you they weren’t that good! They were just lucky last year! These are the real Royals!”

Which is stupid because, who cares? This isn’t college sports where victories can be retroactively wiped out. Flags, and the memories that go with them, fly forever. Failure this year, or God forbid another 30-year drought, doesn’t change what happened in October 2015.

Still, for some reason, I’m rooting extra hard against the Blue Jays and Mets for the rest of the year. For some reason those taunts will sting a little more from their fans. Not that I know any Blue Jays fans, and the one Mets fan I know is a super nice lady at St. P’s.

I’ll keep watching and listening, though. Just in case there’s a little magic left.

Memorable Events

July 18, 2016 / DB

Summer continues to fly by. We’re just three-and-a-half weeks from school beginning. Today is our annual trip an hour north to watch the girls’ cousin show his pigs at his county fair. Taking the city kids to the county fair is always fun!

Last week we watched Apollo 13. The act of watching it was nearly as epic as the flight of Apollo 13. One of the girls learned about the flight at school way back in the winter. When I told them there was a movie about it, they all wanted to watch it. I checked our library’s website, saw the Blu Ray was checked out but due back soon, so I put a Hold on it. We were first in line. I told the girls we’d probably get to watch it in a week or so. That week went by, no disk. Then another. And another. And another. I’d check every few days to see our hold status still listed as pending, and the disk showing it was past due. After about six weeks, we figured whoever had it lost it or damaged it to the point where it was unusable. We kind of forgot about it, never even checking Amazon to rent it there. Then on July 8 I finally got the notice that the disk was available for pickup. Weird.

The girls liked it a lot. There were many moments of me having to explain different parts of it. After the movie, I looked on several sites to see how much dramatic license Ron Howard took with the story to translate it to film. I was pleased that with minor exceptions, and a few composite characters, the movie was pretty faithful to the real story.

I also had to explain to them what the space shuttle was! How crazy is that? I remember first reading books about space and astronauts in first or second grade, when the Apollo program wasn’t that far in the past, and the space shuttle was undergoing tests. Now our kids are growing up in an age where regular, manned space flight doesn’t exist.

Talking through the Apollo 13 flight, and the history of space flight in general, got me thinking about a meme from a couple weeks ago that was popular around the web: what was the first major news story that you remember? Common responses from folks in my general age range were the Iran hostage crisis and the Challenger disaster.

My mom worked at a TV station in the late 70s. And I had a TV in my room as early as when I was 7.[1] So I was watching Walter Cronkite on a nightly basis from a pretty early age. After thinking it through, I’m pretty sure the first major news event I have vivid memories of was the Jonestown massacre in November 1978. That’s a fun one to have stuck in your head.

Our girls have a very different connection with the news than I did as a kid. My grandparents always had the radio tuned to the local station and shushed everyone at the top of each hour for the news bulletin. My mom’s parents sat at their kitchen table all day with the TV on. Lunch and dinner were consumed to the noon and 6:00 news. And then I always had the news on in my room once I got my own TV.

We rarely watch the news with our girls. We don’t get a newspaper. And so many of the major news stories of this summer are ones we discuss quietly away from their ears. I wonder what major event they will remember most when they get older and look back on their childhoods.

Benefits of being a *Latchkey Kid*: I guess my mom figured an old black-and-white TV in my bedroom would keep me out of trouble. ↩

ASG Notes

July 13, 2016 / DB

Well, that was a pretty good All-Star Game. I mean, it wasn’t the total Royals takeover from last year. But Ned Yost was still making the lineup and calling the shots, Kelvin Herrera had a nice 1–2–3 inning in relief, and Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez had the two biggest hits of the night. Off former Royal Johnny Cueto for added KC flavor.

It was a good, competitive game to watch that really summed up where baseball is today: the team that got to the middle of the game with the lead had an immense advantage as they rolled out one dominant reliever after another. The National League did make it interesting, getting runners on against everyone except Herrera. The 8th was especially dicey with the bases loaded, two outs, and a 3–2 count on Aledmys Diaz before a terrific fastball right on the paint from Will Harris ended the threat. The only thing that would have made it more Royals-y was if Hosmer and Perez had saved their second inning homers for the bottom of the 8th. And instead of home runs, they sandwiched doubles around a couple walks or singles. And Lorenzo Cain was the guy scoring the winning run.

With the Royals 7 games behind Cleveland and 4.5 out of the Wild Card spot at the break, I hope last night wasn’t the final great moment of the Royals two-plus year run.

Aside from the outcome, my biggest impression of the game was the confirmation that I just don’t have any depth of knowledge of today’s players despite how much baseball I watch. I know just about everyone from the American League. But other than the superstars from the NL, I kept grabbing my iPad to look up who second-tier players were. Yes, I watch a ton of baseball. But it’s all Royals. I never watch the ESPN evening games or Fox’s Saturday games. I don’t watch nightly highlights shows. Most notably, I don’t read a daily paper anymore, so there’s no pouring through box scores from both leagues each morning or Sunday reviews of the league leaders.

For example, I knew Johnny Cueto was having a fantastic year in San Francisco. But I had no idea he was 13–1 with a 2.47 ERA.

It’s not hard to find a website to review the stats I used to read in Sunday’s paper. Or pull up the standings in my At Bat app. But I’ve just never created that routine when I transitioned to digital. So I know all about the Royals, but that’s about it.

Some other random observations from the evening:

I think I’m required to say in my ASG posts that I dig how players still break out wacky shoes for the game. They’re a lot cooler now than in the 80s when guys just put on white spikes for the night.
M and L walked into the room in the first inning. When I told them Cueto was pitching, they started jumping up-and-down and began singing the Johnny Cueto song. Good times.
I love Big Papi. But I thought they overdid things with making the game about him. He’s a Hall of Famer, an iconic player of his generation, and obviously immensely respected by his fellow players. But coming out of the dugout to greet him when he was pinch run for? I thought it was telling that the crowd reaction seemed a bit muted. It’s not like it was Hank Aaron. Granted, I think these celebrations of departing stars are overdone with everyone.
San Diego seems like a nice city.

And now we’re off for the second half of the season. The Royals sure could use a starter (or two), some good luck on the injury front, and a nice six-week hot streak from everyone in the lineup.

June Books

July 12, 2016 / DB

June Books
Time for our mid-month review of last month’s books.

Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me – Steven Hyden. I’ve been waiting for this one for quite awhile. Hyden has been my favorite music writer for some time now, going back to when he wrote for the AV Club and Pitchfork. His Grantland profile of The War on Drugs before the release of their masterpiece Lost In The Dream album is the modern standard for the epic band piece. He’s been teasing this book for well over a year, so it was great to finally read it.

And it’s just perfect. He hits on some of the biggest musical rivalries over the years not just to declare a winner and loser, but to examine the different ways we listen to, celebrate, and honor music and the people who make it. He weaves in personal stories, or broader narratives, in a way that would have been perfect on the old Grantland site. And, for the most part, I agree with how he shakes out the rivalries.

Oasis vs. Blur was ultimately dumb. Pearl Jam vs. Nirvana will never be settled, because it’s largely argued amongst people who secretly like the band they’re slagging. He loves the Stones, but can’t put the Beatles on any Best Of list because they are automatically #1. The Black Keys won the popularity war with Jack White, but White won the artistic war. You may side with the Dixie Chicks, but was their feud with Toby Keith worth it since in basically destroyed their career? What if America Clapton had died young and Jimi Hendrix lived to be an old, boring musician? And on and on.

This is the rare book that I’ll read again at some point.

A Beginner’s Guide to Paradise – Alex Sheshunoff. Sometimes I find books in weird ways. For this one, the exact location was odd but it was in a very old-school way. I saw this book displayed in the Harvard Coop Bookstore when we popped in so the girls could use the bathroom on our visit to Cambridge. I snapped a pic of the cover and looked it up at the library when we got home.

It is the true story of Sheshunoff, who in the early ’00s became dissatisfied with his tech industry job in New York and the rather empty life he was living. So he sold his interest in the company, sublet his apartment in Manhattan, and moved to the Pacific, hoping to find new meaning in paradise.

Like so many of the other books I’ve read about traveling in the Pacific, Sheshunoff struggled to connect with the locals. They seemed impenetrable. And the islands themselves never quite matched the screensaver ideal of paradise he had in his head.

But eventually he found a nice island, met a nice American girl who was nearly as nutty as he was, and they set to building their home in paradise. Not everything went smoothly, but in the end, he was successful. And he married the girl.

One Summer – Bill Bryson. I read a flurry of Bryson’s travel books a decade or so ago, but none since. Living through a summer that may be veering toward one of the most memorable in US history for terrible reasons, it seemed like a good time to look back on another momentous summer in our nation’s history.

The summer of 1927 saw Charles Lindbergh cross the Atlantic, Babe Ruth lead one of the most dominating baseball teams of all time and become our first massive sports icon, Prohibition start to crumble, “talking” pictures begin to muscle out silent films, one president show near disdain for the office while one of his cabinet members did everything he could to prove he was worthy of the office, Jack Dempsey and the rise of prize fighting, and a handful of finance ministers from the US, Britain, Germany, and France make secret decisions that would force an unsustainable economy over the edge.

Bryson spins away and back to these core stories. He examines in depth the race to be the first to fly across the Atlantic. He follows Lindbergh on his punishing victory tour after his flight, his extreme discomfort in the public eye, and tragic fall from grace that culminated with a controversial speech in Iowa in 1941. He goes back and explains how Prohibition came to be the law of the land, how the government willingly poisoned its own citizens to prevent people from drinking, and how many legal ways there were around the ban on liquor. Plus plenty of other snapshots of that time between the wars.

This isn’t deep history. It’s entertaining history, told in a humorous and engaging voice.

The Inn at Lake Devine – Elinor Lippman. So back in college my roommate and I were at the record store, picking through CDs. This was during a brief time when our local record shop had a machine where you could scan the barcode of a CD and it would play 30 second samples of all the songs for you. It was a crude, but useful, way to try before you buy. Or bought. Anyway, you had a limit of three CDs to try, and there was always a long line. I was debating whether to get the new Buffalo Tom album[1] but the line was too long to take a sample listen. “You should get it,” he said. “I listened to it last week and it’s pretty good.” I bought the disk, got it home, and hated it. When I asked him about it sometime later, he laughed and said, “I never listened to it but wanted you to buy it because I was afraid it was terrible.”

What does that have to do with this book? Well, it’s not often I get suckered into reading a book I normally wouldn’t be interested in. I found this one on the AV Club’s summer reading guide last month. Based on the blurb there, it sounded like a funny, yet interesting, look a specific moment in American history. What that blurb didn’t mention was this is very much a romantic tale. And by an author whose main audience is probably women between 35–65.

But guess what? I liked it! Yes, there’s some romance stuff, but it’s not like some Harlequin Romance. It’s got good depth – focusing on the rather casual anti-Semitism that was too common in our country in the 1960s and 1970s – without being too heavy. It’s funny. The characters are fun and relatable. And, best of all, this is a really good summer read because it flies by. I read about 75% of it over two days at the girls’ swim practices. Books that entertain and keep me on book-a-week pace are the best.

The one with “Soda Jerk” on it. ↩

Weekend With A Little One

July 11, 2016 / DB

This morning I was thinking about where we were in the summer calendar. Then I took a look and realized the girls go back to school one month from today. Yikes! So much still to do. We better get cracking.

This weekend was much better than last, at least weather-wise. Perfect lake weather during the days as we hosted our good friends the Heberts. Saturday night was clear and pleasant as we dropped anchor to watch our lake’s annual fireworks show. If every summer weekend was as nice as this one, the population of Indiana would be at least 10 times bigger than it is. Fortunately the mugginess is coming back this week, and we’ll revert to our oppressive normal.

There was another highlight to the weekend. We were taking care of our one-year-old niece, Little L, from Boston as her mom and dad finished their Midwest visit with a run up to Chicago for a wedding. She is such a sweetie that it was a pretty easy couple of days.

Since they left on Friday morning, that meant the girls and I got first shift with Little L. I was a little worried about that, since although she’s been around me a few times in the last month, she doesn’t exactly know me well. But the beauty of her being a day-care kid is she’s used to her parents dropping her off with other people every morning. There were no tears or other unhappiness when mom and dad left. The girls were all up and made sure to do all they could to keep Little L occupied. It took awhile, but eventually she was playing peek-a-boo and run-around-the-living room with me, or climbing up in my lap on her own to read a book. Nap times were a breeze. She ate everything I gave her.

The biggest challenge, I told S that night, was I had no idea what her cues are to show she’s hungry, needs a diaper change, etc. With your own kids, you’re used to all their mannerisms that signal changes in mood or need. Since Little L is only 14 months old, she can’t exactly walk up and say, “Uncle D1,[1] I’m hungry, my diaper is feeling a little saturated, and I think I’ll be ready to go lay down in about 20 minutes.” Fortunately I don’t think I missed anything major.

She got to go back to the lake for the second-straight weekend, too. We took two vehicles down and she rode with me. We were leaving right around nap time and she was acting a little fussy before we left. C and L rode with me, flanking Little L’s car seat so they could try to distract her if she got wound up. In a rather inspired move, I put on the SiriusXM Yacht Rock station and that seemed to knock her right out. She slept for approximately 60 of the 75 minutes it takes us to get to the lake.

She did great at the lake, too. It took her awhile to warm up to our guests, but eventually she was fast friends with them. This weekend could have been really difficult, but she is so laid back and happy that it was mostly a breeze.

The only downside of the weekend was Saturday night. Poor kid is teething and that was the only time it seemed to be bugging her. She just couldn’t fall asleep. Eventually I took her out of her pack-n-play, set her on my chest, and leaned back on the couch in the dark living room. This is a position I was in at least 10,000 times in the years our girls were young and teething. Then as now, it worked. She was snoring softly on me after about five minutes. I let her sleep there for about half an hour – I was a little in-and-out myself and, let’s face it, a baby/toddler sleeping soundly on you is one of the best things in life – before I transferred her back to the pack-n-play without incident.

Spending this time with Little L over the weekend reminded me of all the good things that came with having a one-year-old in the house. Don’t get me wrong, I have zero interest in having another kid.[2] It was really nice having her around, though.

Since I have two brothers-in-law who have names that begin with D, I can’t just be Uncle D. Since I’m the oldest of the three, and the first to marry into my wife’s family, I’ve claimed Uncle D1 for myself. ↩
That’s been taken care of, anyway. ↩

KD and the Euro

July 7, 2016 / DB

Between swim practices and meets, family visiting, daily errands, and general laziness, I somehow started two posts late last week that I never got around to posting. So much for using interesting links as the jumping-off point for my own writing! We’ll get there, pop. We’ll get there.

Anyway, a couple sports notes.

KD to GS

Man, color me shocked when Kevin Durant announced he was signing with Golden State on Monday. The rumors had been around for months, but they never seemed real to me. I figured he would either re-sign with OKC, or go to an east coast team.

In the wake of his decision, I think there are three camps in moments like these. 1) The jilted fans from a player’s old team, who have every right to be upset. 2) Neutral fans who like the player, and thus are fine with his decision. 3) Neutral fans who do not like the player or the team he goes to, and thus are pissed about his decision.

I’m a big KD fan, and I like the Warriors. So I was just fine with his move. I don’t get all the outrage, though. He handled it way better than LeBron handled his move to Miami.[1] He was respectful of OKC and its fans. He didn’t burn any bridges. And in the end he did what we are supposed to want players to do: he made the move he thinks gives him the best chance to win.

We rip players who sign huge free agent contracts with middling teams that have no chance to win a title. “He’s just out for money and himself!” Durant did exactly the opposite: he signed with the team that just won the most regular season games in NBA history, won a title a year ago, and lost in game seven this year. Yeah, he’s not exactly taking a pay cut to do it, so it’s not like there’s a sacrifice involved. But he’s also entering a situation where he will not be The Man. Which is an amazing thing for a guy who is one of the top three players in the league and won an MVP two years ago.

You don’t have to love the move. But I don’t understand how you can rip it as a sign of everything that’s wrong with the NBA. KD is just as free to make the decision he thinks is best for his career as every other player is.

And all the people saying “Magic never left the Lakers to play with Bird,” or vice versa need to stop. Totally different eras in every single way. How do we know one of them wouldn’t have switched coasts if they had grown up in an era where the elite players all know each other from a decade of summer ball as teenagers and after two generations of free agency have made all pro athletes less loyal to the team that drafts them?

(News broke late Wednesday night that Dwyane Wade will be leaving Miami for Chicago today. I imagine his age plus going to his hometown team will bring a different reaction. What if he had signed with Cleveland, though?[2] I imagine he’s getting more money from Chicago. And the Bulls are certainly a lot farther from an NBA title than the Cavs. Is his move selfish? Shouldn’t he be more concerned with winning? I’m sure all the people who bitched about KD on Tuesday will be ideologically consistent today.)

Euro 2016

I missed much of the quarterfinals, including Italy’s heartbreaking loss to Germany on penalties and Iceland’s dream tournament coming to an end in a first-rate thrashing to France. But even with my Azzurri falling, I had a team to support. I may only be 1/4 or 1/5 or 1/8 Welsh,[3] but since my last name is Welsh, I claim them. And this year’s Wales team making it all the way to the semifinals was a joy to watch. I caught all of the second half of their quarterfinals win over Belgium, which was brilliant. And Wednesday, their fans were in full-throat the entire day against Portugal. Sadly Wales was playing without two key players because of the stupid yellow card rule, had a bad three minutes, and lost 2–0. Since I despise Christiano Ronaldo, and thus the current Portugal team, it was an especially tough loss. Now I’m potentially forced to pull for France in a major tournament final, unless the Germans can knock off the hosts today.

I enjoy European soccer a lot, but I hate how these tournaments often totally change character when the knock-out rounds begin. Teams that pushed forward and made an effort to score in the group stage suddenly pull back and play not to lose as much as to win. It’s so frustrating to watch teams that played beautiful soccer in their first three games pull the throttle way back when a loss means a ticket home. That’s one thing that was so much fun to watch about Spain during their four years of dominance; they always looked to be creative and find chances to score. But most teams are so scared of making a big mistake and falling behind early that they neuter what got them deep into the tournament in the first place.

A decision LeBron acknowledged was a mistake, to his immense credit. ↩
No idea if that was ever a serious possibility. There was discussion of that move on a couple sites, but whether there was substance to the rumor is another thing. ↩
I’m all mixed up, so I have no idea what percentage Welsh, or anything else, I am. ↩

Holiday Weekend

July 5, 2016 / DB

We had big plans for the holiday weekend. Unfortunately Mother Nature got in the way.

The Fourth of July weekend is normally a family gathering time at our lake house. This year we had our family from Boston coming in, along with most of the locals. Which meant we added a one-year-old to the mix. Plus two babies. In a small house. And then it rained most of the weekend.

Guess what? Everything turned out pretty great! All the little ones dealt with the close quarters and lack of outside time well. More importantly, our girls did really well. There was minimal whining about being bored.[1] I think having their cousins around was a fine distraction.

We only got one boat ride in Saturday, which was cool and cloudy and threatening, but stayed dry until late in the afternoon. It was one of those rare summer days when the water was warmer than the air, so the kids were happy to swim and play on the water toys around the dock. L did some fishing, and caught the biggest fish she’s ever caught. She came running up to the house yelling, “Dad! I caught a fish this big!” with her hands about 18” apart. We ran down and saw she indeed got a good-sized bass, but closer to 12” than 18”. She’s obviously turning into quite the fisher as she’s exaggerating about the size of her catches!

Sunday was pretty much a total washout, with heavy rain off-and-on all day. We still squeezed in a big family meal for lunch, then naps for a lot of us as the kids watched movies. The real fun kicked in Sunday evening when the power went out for about five hours. Thank goodness it was relatively cool outside or we would have been miserable without A/C.

We packed up much earlier than planned Monday and came home for another lazy day. We stayed up and watched fireworks from Washington, D.C., New York, and Boston but that was the extent of our Independence Day celebrating.

Today we’re off to the zoo with the Boston family. After three days in the 60s and 70s, it’s supposed to be pushing 90 and humid. Timing, man, timing.

Now there was some whining. But less than I feared. ↩