Month: May 2018 (Page 2 of 2)

Kids and Whatnot

We are in the midst of our two busiest weeks of the spring.

Last week the family had a combined eight kickball games in four nights. We swept all eight of them, the closest game being the first of the week. L’s team, which played without five players because of injury/illness/conflicts, came from 10 down to win by one. Most of the rest of the games were comfortable, with a couple run-ruled wins in there.

Last night we had a kickball and soccer practice and tonight begin a run of five games in four nights.

M’s team is in the best shape. They are undefeated and lead their division by a game. They play the second-place team, who they beat by one run in 10 innings a few weeks back, on Wednesday. Win that and the go to the City finals for the fifth time. Lose and they will have to play a single-game playoff to determine the division winner.

L’s team has just one loss, but that was to the first-place team by 30+ runs. They play again on Thursday, but I’m not real confident we can manage a 30-run swing to force a playoff game. C’s team has a couple losses, but have mostly played against teams filled with older girls. Spring of fifth grade is often about toughening the girls up for the fall, when they will play on A teams.

I have a few good kickball stories I’m going to save for next week. We will dive into the 10-inning game M had in great detail.

L’s soccer team is undefeated as well. We made sure we got the prodigy who played for us last fall to sign up again. We figure he will always out-score opponents on his own, so as long as he doesn’t have a conflict with one of the other two teams he plays for, we’re good. They did have to play without him in one of their games last weekend and L picked up the slack, creating shots for her teammates and putting in enough of her own to ensure the win. She’s averaging 5–6 goals a game, but that number is padded by a game when she scored 10. The poor team we were playing that day just was not very good and even pulling our kids back and telling them to work on passing wasn’t enough to slow down our goal scorers.


I mentioned we had a few projects that were keeping me busy during the days. One of them involved getting a new car. We still had six or seven months left on the lease on the Suburban I had been driving for almost three years. We were ridiculously past the miles limit already, so just planned on buying it when the lease ran out.

Our salesman called me a few weeks back to check on our plans. When I told him we would probably purchase it, he said, “Come in and see me. We’ll work something out.”

Ominous words coming from a car salesman!

I went in and a couple days later ended up dropping off the Suburban and driving away in a much nicer Tahoe. I’m still not really sure I understand how this works for them, but they bought us out of our lease with zero penalties or fees. Granted, they put us in a new lease for another 39 months and have a Suburban in very good cosmetic shape with decent miles on their used car lot. But, still, seems like we got the better of the deal.

The Tahoe is much nicer than the Suburban, which is cool. Power everything, leather, etc. where the Suburban was the lowest tier of trim. We lost a seat in the process – the middle row has captain seats instead of a bench seat – but the girls like not being on top of each other. One less kid we can haul to games or practices, though. The big thing is the loss of all that cargo space Suburbans have. That was vital to our lake weekends, so we’re really going to have to rethink how we pack when we head south.

That was good, clean, unexpected fun!


S and I went to her cousin’s wedding Saturday. It was nice and fun. We were all well-behaved, so no good stories to share.


M and I were supposed to head south today for her seventh grade retreat which is always held at the CYO camp down near our lake house. There was a scheduling snafu with busses, parents were asked to transport kids, but only a few of us volunteered, thus the trip got cancelled. M’s class has had a rough few weeks; there have been some broad behavior issues and the entire grade had their school-issued laptops taken from them. When she learned their retreat had been cancelled, she sighed and said, “They all hate us…” Meaning the teachers and administrators. So dramatic. I was cool with not having to get up at 6:00 this morning and spend the day with moody teens. Plus I’m headed to the lake Thursday to take care of some projects down there.


The girls are down to 13 days of school before summer vacation. They are beginning to think ahead about what they’d like to do over break. We already have a number of camps scheduled. We’re going to join the local water park. No trips this year, or at least none that involve traveling out of state. At dinner last night we were throwing out ideas for the days when we don’t have something scheduled. It’s going to get here quick.

Friday Vid

Today is the St. P’s annual day of service. I’m signed up to join C’s class at a local food bank and we were scheduled to leave very early, so this was actually posted Thursday night.

Last month was the 10th anniversary of my favorite album of this century, Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight. I have not posted anything about that because I’m saving my recollections for the anniversary of when I first heard the band. Believe me, I will have some thoughts to share.

This winter the band went on a mini tour to celebrate the album’s 10 years of wrecking people’s hearts. They played very small clubs – clubs the size they were playing 10 years ago – and the dates sold out brutally quickly. Too quickly for me to even consider seeing them in Chicago, let alone try to get tickets. Luckily they stopped off at the AV Club’s office to do an AV Club Session.

Here is the first Frightened Rabbit song I ever heard. In a few more weeks I’ll share how that song, and the album, affected me nearly instantly. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to get the AV Club’s videos to embed in WordPress, so please follow the link below to watch.

Frightened Rabbit – “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms

 

Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 7

Chart Week: April 21, 1984
Song: “Time After Time” – Cyndi Lauper
Chart Position: #36, 2nd week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for two weeks in June.

I recently read an article suggesting, based on an analysis of information from Spotify, that for the majority of us, the music we listen to between ages 11–16 form the basis for the music we listen to as adults.[1] I suppose this helps explain why I so love the music of 1984; that was the year I turned 13. Then again, that was a truly magical year for music so I don’t know if it matters whether I was 12/13 or some other age. It likely would have stuck with me regardless.

And I don’t know that it necessarily set the musical standard that I’ve stuck with my entire life. I certainly still listen to a lot of music both from and influenced by that period. And I come to a full stop when I hear a countdown from 1984. But I’ve also been listening to, primarily, alternative and indie rock for well over 20 years now. And I’ve always taken pride in keeping up with the latest trends in those genres rather than just listening to old tunes over and over. Witness my year-end music lists I spend hours putting together each December.

Still it was comforting to know that there may be some deep, biological explanation for why the music from 1984 still has such a strong effect on me.

Last week I listened to a good chunk of this countdown. Unlike the 1984 countdown I heard in February, we are now starting to get into the heart of the music that defined that epic year. It featured four songs from the Footloose soundtrack. Lionel Richie, Madonna, and Van Halen were all on the chart. And there were two Cyndi Lauper songs.

“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is one of the iconic songs of that era. Helped immensely by its goofy video and Lauper’s unique look, it is one of those songs that seems undeniably connected to a specific moment in time yet will be played and loved forever. Lauper was this wacky, likable, non-threatening feminist who was intent on carving out a new place for women in music and society. Based on this song, she didn’t seem all that different from Weird Al Yankovic, an artist who would provide more comic relief than artistic quality.

Then she dropped “Time After Time” as her follow-up single and began staking a claim as one of the biggest, most important artists of the year. I think she also blew everyone’s minds a little. “Wait, is that really Cyndi Lauper singing this serious, somber song?”

Folks woke up quickly. With good reason, as it is an incredible song. As I recall, I tried to resist it. It was written for people at least 10 years older than me. When I was just trying to hold girls hands and maybe get a kiss, I couldn’t understand the emotional weight behind a track like this. Yet it still resonated with me, even if I couldn’t quite grasp what Lauper was singing about.

That emotional content is something I learned to appreciate as I aged. Plus, getting older means you can admit to liking slower, deeper songs that are made more for quiet moments alone than for dancing around with friends.

I swear I hear this track at least once a week on SiriusXM. Which makes me happy. I think people unfairly recall Lauper’s look, her unforgettable New York accent, and the video for “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and dismiss the rest of her career. They’ve turned her into a de facto one-hit-wonder even though she was far from that. She had four Top 5 hits in 1984 alone, then added another #1, a #3, and a #6 before the end of the 80s. It’s good that some other people out there remember “Time After Time” which is, by far, her best song.

Don’t believe me? The writers behind Parks & Recreation were down.


Reading up on the song’s background, I found something I knew and something I did not.

I knew that Lauper wrote the song with Rob Hyman, just before his band, The Hooters, became famous.

What I did not know was that her label was pushing for “Time After Time” to be the lead single for her album She’s So Unusual. Lauper objected, saying leading with a ballad would close people’s minds about her music and derail her career. She and her manager fought for “Girls” to be the first single. Who knows if things would have been any different had her first two singles been swapped in order. But she deserves credit for fighting for control of her career. Her choice worked out pretty well.


Somewhat ironically the same day I heard this on our local AT 40 replay, the Sirius replay was from 1987. My brother in music, John N, sent me a message saying he had just heard Lauper’s remake of Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Going On” in that countdown. He wondered why she thought the world needed that song in 1987. My response was: hubris. After her 1984, when if not for Prince and Bruce she would have had the biggest chart year of any artist, Lauper and the people around her probably thought she could do anything. Apparently a lot of the public agreed; her remake peaked at a respectable #12. She would only have one more Top 40 hit after that, though.


  1. For men it is 13–16; women are a little earlier at 11–14.  ↩

Stats

April 2018

  • MasterSystem – 48
  • Janelle Monáe – 41
  • Lord Huron – 31
  • Wye Oak – 31
  • Amen Dunes – 24

Complete stats available at my Last.fm page

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