Month: July 2018 (Page 1 of 2)

Old TV + Reader’s Notebook

July 31, 2018 / DB

As I’ve documented here many times over the years, sometimes I get paralyzed by the many options I have for watching quality TV. There is a long list of shows that I need to go back and watch, but I’m always torn about where to start, whether to watch one to completion on its own or to start several at one time, and whether to focus on shows I’ve not seen or mix in some classic shows as well.

The first weekend we had cable installed in the new house I came across a block of The Office episodes on Comedy Central and watched for about an hour. That finally pushed me to jump back and re-watch an old favorite. I’ve been watching 4–5 episodes of The Office each day over the past week—plus and am now deep into season three. If you remember the show’s timeline, I’m up to the point where corporate announced that, despite their initial plans to the opposite, the Stamford office would be closing and merging with the Scranton office.

I don’t think The Office was a show that I watched episodes multiple times during its original run, but it’s amazing how many moments from those early seasons were still incredibly familiar. That’s the sign of an iconic show. I had forgotten how, especially in season one, the Jim-Pam thing was often cringe-worthy. It took the writers some time to veer away from cliche and turn that relationship into one of the best will they/won’t they duos since Sam and Diane.[1] I had also forgotten that there was a genuinely cruel side and dangerously incompetent to Michael Scott that drew from Ricky Gervais’ David Brent character on the British original. I remembered Scott as a well-meaning, lovable buffoon.

Another memory of the show I had that was incorrect was that it got off to a very slow start over season one. Sure, there was some footing finding in that first year, and many of the secondary characters would not blossom until later. But the show was pretty damn good from the beginning. I was obviously thinking of Parks & Recreation, which barely survived a difficult first half-season before making some casting and directions changes in season two that turned it into a classic.

Anyway, that’s all lead up to my latest book which has me thinking about rewatching another classic of modern TV.

All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire – Jonathan Abrams
Reading this oral history of The Wire made me want to jump back into those DVDs badly. At its best, the show was as good as anything ever put on TV. Seasons three and four are among the medium’s greatest and true fans of the show can argue about which was better for hours.

Abrams got just about every key actor on the show to share their experiences. It makes for entertaining reading. Andre Royo, who played the junkie/informer, was the star of the book. His insights were full of enthusiasm, passion, and honesty. So many of the actors where obscure when the show began and it is interesting to see how, notably, Michael K. Williams and Idris Elba handled going from nobodies to cult heroes to stars. As was hearing about how the show was developed from David Simon’s and Ed Burns’ ideas, along with their yearly battles to keep the show on air, adds to its mythology.

I did find it to be fawning at times. I lost track of how many times an actor referred to Simon as brilliant. Which he kind of is, but still. I think the overall tone was typical of a piece of pop culture like The Wire: a show that was critically acclaimed, criminally under-watched, and then became a legend after its run ended. There seems to be a push to remind everyone of its greatness. While there is some talk of discord on the set, for the most part the memories shared are of unity of purpose, belief in the mission of the show, and a fondness for the years the group spent together. Which is really fine. I don’t necessarily want to read a bunch of dirt for the sake of dirt. But even as much as I loved the show, it came off rather fluffy to me.

Now the only downside is we don’t have a good area in the house, currently, where I can go back and watch a show that has sex and violence and drugs and lots of racial language without being overheard by the girls. Once we get our basement put together, though, I may have to pull those DVDs out and run through the series again. Until then I’ve got The Office and a long list of other shows I can work through.

Speaking of old TV shows, every fall I wonder if I should go back and re-watch Cheers, or at least season five, rather than just watch the Thanksgiving Orphans episode in November. ↩

Weekend Wrap

July 30, 2018 / DB

It is a dreary, rainy Monday. A good day to just lie around and not do anything. Which is a good thing since about half the house is out of commission thanks to a stomach bug that is still working its way through the house.

Not especially good timing for that as last weekend was a big family gathering for my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday celebration. Her official party was Saturday evening and we brought the immediate family to our place for a lunch and hanging out on Sunday. I don’t know the exact count but I’m guessing at least 10 people had some kind of intestinal issue over that stretch. The odd thing is some of the people who got sick were ill before they interacted with each other. So we may have served as a focal point for the joining of several varying GI bugs. If there’s a Super Flu racing through the country soon, you can blame us.

Other than that, the celebration was good. It was a relatively cool weekend, at least for July in Indiana. Lots of good food. Our first chance to meet our newest nephew, who is nine months old. The first time all of S’s siblings have been together in a long time. We’re interested to see how the big group photos turn out. When you have a three-year-old, three two-year-olds, and a baby it makes for interesting photography times.

Friday I drove down to pick up M from her week of camp. She had another really good time, making a couple new friends and hanging out with two of her best friends. They were all in tears when I picked them up. I reminded her, good naturedly, that she would see her school friends in just a couple days. She said “But this is our last year at camp!” Which seemed like a solid point. Until she told me, on our way home, that she wants to come back next year for one of the other sections of the camp that is open to older kids, she wants to be a junior counselor when she turns 16, and she wants to be a full counselor when she goes to college. Teenage girls, man…

She turned 14 while she was away. I’m retiring the birthday posts, mostly because I feel like the girls are all pretty locked into their personalities and it’s harder to think of several hundred words to write about them on their birthdays. She definitely seems like a 14-year-old, though. Mood swings, irrational emotional outbursts, moments she expresses strong confidence countered by ones when she is totally unsure of herself. Every element of her personality expressed to its maximum level. It’s a delightful time to be a parent.

We’re down to two-and-a-half weeks of summer break remaining. We have a fairly busy week of activities lined up this week, weather and health permitting. C begins her normal cross country practice schedule this week. Kickball practice is about to start, too, and soccer is a couple weeks away. Our not-so-lazy summer schedule is about to shift into the super packed stretch of weeks that are the beginning of the school year.

Reading for the Stars, Vol. 10

July 27, 2018 / DB

Chart Week: July 10, 1982
Song: “Play the Game Tonight” – Kansas
Chart Position: #17, 10th week on the chart. Peaked at #17 for three weeks.

I would guess I heard this song approximately once in a quarter century before I heard it at, of all places, a high school football game a few years back. In the hour of pre-game, pump-up music that was heavy with AC/DC, Guns ‘n Roses, and Metallica, the dad who was playing the tunes threw this in. It was very random, but, when you consider the title, also a pretty inspired choice.

I guarantee I didn’t hear it again until I became a SiriusXM subscriber and now I’ll hear it a few times a year on the Classic Rewind channel, or in a VJ Big 40 Countdown.

I heard it on our local AT40 replay two weeks ago while eating a bagel. It got me inspired to do some Sunday morning Wikipedia-ing. I read about the change in band’s lineup, when original vocalist Steve Walsh left and was replaced by John Elefante in the early 80s. Elefante, who sang “Play the Game Tonight,” was the choice after a rather broad search for a replacement for Walsh. There are several relatively obscure singers who were also in the running along with one who was on the verge of major fame. Sammy freaking Hagar auditioned to be the lead singer of Kansas! That kind of blew my mind, because it doesn’t make much sense.

Kansas always made somewhat pretentious, album-oriented, progressive rock. They are perhaps the archetype for a cheesy, late 70s American rock band. There was never any affectation to anything Sammy did. He was just a good time, straight outta the bar, rock ‘n roller. There were no attempts at deeper religious allegory in his lyrics as in some of Kansas’ songs. It seems like an odd combination and makes sense that it didn’t work out. I wonder if it was the band reaching out to him, an artist who had not yet carved out broad solo success, or the ambitious Hagar wanting to latch on to a band that had a couple massive hits a few years earlier and were trying to claw their way back into relevance.

The bigger question to me, though, is had Sammy joined Kansas, what happens when David Lee Roth leaves Van Halen? If he had hauled Kansas back onto the charts, but with a far more ornate sound that VH’s, would he still have been a candidate to replace DLR? I think probably not. So who does Eddie go after then?

I’m going to spend approximately 35 seconds thinking about this. My first thought was someone from Night Ranger, who blew up in 1984 and played a similar good-time r-n-r to Sammy’s solo work. But Jack Blades played bass and Kelly Keagy played drums, so the Night Ranger’s two lead vocalists would not slot into VH at that time. (As far as we know Eddie wasn’t ready to throw Michael Anthony off the bus yet in 1984.)

Tommy Shaw was responsible for many of Styx’s most rocking hits, where Dennis DeYoung penned their softer, more Top 40 tunes. DeYoung had gone off on his own by 1984. Styx was in limbo. Shaw both sang and played guitar. Now I’m not sure if Shaw was dynamic enough to front VH. DLR was an impossible guy to replace, but at least Sammy brought his own brand of laid-back charisma that helped him slot in fairly easily. I honestly don’t know if Shaw had full-time lead man chops.

Fortunately Sammy Hagar did not take Steve Walsh’s slot in Kansas, he put out some solid solo songs for a few years, and then we got a couple pretty good albums out of Van Hagar. As for Kansas, they had one more top 40 hit in 1986 and then faded away. I think some version of the band still tours, so good for them. “Carry On Wayward Son” is an all-time classic good enough to get you on the casino and state fair circuit.

This song, though, is pure 1982 classic rock shlock.

Camps and Sports

July 24, 2018 / DB

It is another camp week for us, which means the house is a little quieter. M is spending her week at CYO camp an hour south. We dropped her off Sunday. Although we drove through rain on the way there, we did not have to walk through a deluge to get to her cabin as we did with C in June. M is very excited to be back for her third year there. Five classmates are in her cabin with her. Looks like it will actually be reasonably warm rather than scorching hot while she’s down there, which is a bonus.

Last week L went to soccer camp at Cathedral, her future high school. She was a little nervous about going as no friends were signed up. The camp is for grades 4–9, too, which meant she would be in the youngest group there. When we walked up on Monday morning all we saw were girls that were much bigger than her. I noticed a worried look on her face. I found a coach, introduced myself, and checked to make sure we were in the right spot. “Yeah, you are. Those girls over there are the high school team. They’re here to help.” Thank goodness, because while I have great confidence in L’s game, I had a hard time seeing her playing against 16 year olds.

Still, when I left, I had a strange feeling. She usually jumps right into things but she had a sense of reserve about her. She’s become a bit of a worrier over the past year or so, and something about her demeanor made me start considering her having a bad experience.

The camp was only 2 ½ hours each morning. When I rolled in to pick her up, there was a part of me that wondered if she would be upset about how the morning went, maybe even ask not to go back the next day. But, as I drove up to the fields, I saw her shooting and scoring in drills and figured everything was fine.

She ended up having a great week. The only bummer was her age group only had three other girls in it. The good side of that was she got a lot of reps and attention. One day I saw the head coach’s wife hanging out with her for a few minutes after practice. They were making short kicks to each other, back-and-forth. When she got in the car I asked L what that was about. She said, “She’s trying to get me not to cross my right leg over my left when I kick.” Private instructions from the coach’s wife, nice!

She did say that the other girls in her group were not very good. She had a great time playing with the high school girls, though. We have a couple daughters of friends on the team. One day one of them came over to say hello after practice. I know she was being nice, but she said, “Man, L is a soccer rock star! My head coach even came over and asked who she was and if she was going to play at Cathedral one day!” That made L smile.

They passed out their camp t-shirts on Friday. She did not take it off until we made her on Sunday night.

This is also my busy kickball week. Sign ups ended Sunday so I have to put teams together, get coaches in the system, make sure we have enough uniforms, etc. I’m also toying with the idea of changing how we divide up one group of girls. I’m sure that’s going to piss some folks off, which is always fun.

Our family controversy is that L decided not to play this season. She claims it is because she’s moving up to U12 soccer, that’s going to be harder, blah blah blah. Yeah, U12 is going to be a little tougher. But she’s always done just fine when she’s been a young kid on a team. And the time investment isn’t any different; she’ll still have one practice and game each week. I know that something else is bugging her about kickball, but I can’t figure out what it is. She seemed to enjoy it last year, although she did tell me then she wasn’t going to play this year. I asked her at least 50 times over the past week if she was sure. When we dropped off M at camp, two of the moms who coach L’s grade started chanting at her from the next cabin, “PLAY KICKBALL! PLAY KICKBALL!” Sucks for her teammates because she’s the best player on the team. But I will not force her to play. I’m hoping she does what C did with volleyball when she skipped last year and then, after watching some classmates play, immediately said she’s playing this year. Sunday night L backed off a little and said she’ll play in the spring. My response wasn’t, “That’s great,” or “Awesome!” or “Thanks.” No, I said, “YOU PLAY SOCCER IN THE SPRING, TOO! HOW IS THAT ANY DIFFERENT?!?!?”

Oh well.

M and C are both playing. M’s team will try to defend their (co) City championship in their last season together. C will be on the 6th grade A team and we hope finally putting the best players in that class on one team will get them a division championship.

Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 9

July 20, 2018 / DB

Chart Week: June 9, 1984
Song: “Eyes Without a Face” – Billy Idol
Chart Position: #18, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 for two weeks in July.

As I said, I’ve been sitting on a couple of these posts. And since Spotify and WordPress appear to be fighting again, I’ll knock this one out in place of a Friday playlist.

This entry is also less about the specific song than something broader. I noticed sometime last summer that I hear Billy Idol songs pretty regularly. I would guess that I hear a Billy Idol song on SiriusXM 5–6 times a week when I’m in the car a lot. When we were still lake goers, the radio station we listened to down there would throw at least a couple of his songs into their eclectic playlist each weekend. I swear I hear “Eyes Without a Face” twice a week, every week.

Which, I don’t know, seems like a lot. Billy was a big artist there for a few years in the mid–80s. But he has a relatively small list of hit songs and I guess I’m a little surprised that they have endured as well as they seem to have done.

To a certain portion of the modern radio audience, though, I wonder if he is the ultimate representation of the 80s. He had a punk rock look, although his biggest hits were far removed from his punk roots. He had an iconic MTV commercial. His VH1 Behind the Music episode was legendary. And his songs were pretty good, too.

This one was his biggest hit until the unfortunate “Mony Mony” remake came along three years later.[1] It’s a real good representation of rock music in 1984. It begins as a slower, ballady track and explodes in the middle with Steve Stevens fantastic guitar solo before calming down again. I have no idea how I didn’t know recently that the female voice in the chorus of the song was singing a French translation of the title, “Les yeux sans visage.” It’s almost embarrassing to me, an 80s music connoisseur and lover of all things 1984, that I never knew that. I think my friends should taunt me with that each time they see me.

Another Billy Idol memory. At our high school dances my buddy who DJed them all would always play “Dancing With Myself.” I don’t know if we requested it, or just loved it because it was so different than the other, standard high school dance fare he played, but that was always the highlight of those dances. Another friend of mine, Steve, and I decided that we would slam dance, as it was called back then, to the track. We did a pretty tame, suburban version of slam dancing and loved every second of it. It kind of became out thing; people looked forward to seeing us awkwardly jump into each other for three minutes.

At a dance our senior year “Dancing With Myself” came on and Steve and I found each other from across the dance floor. After connecting on a couple, um, slams I guess?, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I was spun around to see the school principal looking at me. He said, sternly, “We don’t have slam dancing at Raytown,” and walked away.

As you would expect this became a highlight that is talked about to this day by everyone who attended that fateful night. We would repeat it to each other in class the next week and just roll. We also appreciated that we, two guys never got in trouble, had been labeled as potential social misfits and instigators of anarchy at our sleepy school.

“Mony Mony” hit #1. “Cradle of Love” hit #2 in 1990. ↩

ASG ’18

July 18, 2018 / DB

This has been the summer of my baseball discontent. We’ll get into the reasons for that in a moment. Despite that, I still sat down for my annual viewing of the MLB All Star Game last night. Granted, because of errands, watering the grass, and kids controlling the TV, I wasn’t able to tune in until the 4th inning. Which seemed appropriate for this season. Hey, at least I turned it on!

I never got going with baseball this year. The season began with the Royals alternately getting crushed and rained out over the first week. Also, there was a sporting event in San Antonio that week that occupied much of my attention.

Soon came spring break prep and spring break itself. After our return, spring sports. Next looking at houses and getting ready to move. A few times in April and May I would try to turn on a Royals game, only to be thwarted by our endless network issues we were experiencing at the old house.

The team was shitty, I was busy, and the feed locked up constantly. It was easier to do other things where I had watched the Royals every night for the past five or six years.

If the Royals were just bad I may have tried harder to build the habit back up. But, man, they’ve been terrible. I figured there would be bad stretches this year but I’m still waiting for the first good stretch. There’s almost a majesty to how bad they’ve been. And it will likely get worse as the team tries to move a few pieces over the next couple weeks and begins calling up more guys who have no business playing in the major leagues.

So rather than devote too much time to the big league club, I’ve been following the experts on Twitter and paying attention to blurbs in other sources about the next crop of prospects. As I followed Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, and Yordano Ventura a decade ago, now I’m tracking Nicky Lopez, Nick Pratto, Khalil Lee, and Seuly Matias.

I don’t have a ton of confidence that Dayton Moore is going to get much back for Moustakas or any other players he decides to trade this month. But I’m hopeful that this year’s draft was solid and next year’s very high pick will result in the next future superstar for the organization. And hopefully it won’t be another 25-year wait for them to be in a pennant race again.

Once I turned on the game, it eventually got pretty fun. At least if you like home runs in dramatic situations.

Otherwise I was, as usual, annoyed with Fox mic-ing up players every inning. I was annoyed with commercials for football. And I became annoyed with Joe Buck’s endless slobbering over all the “good guys” in the game. At first I kind of chuckled, because who doesn’t love Jose Altuve? But a few innings later Buck had labeled at least three other guys as “as good a guy as you will find in the game.” Everyone he labeled may, indeed, be a great guy. But it felt forced and pushed upon Buck from above rather than organic.

I was also a bit put off by the endless pushing of connections between the game and the military. Listen, honoring the troops is awesome and anyone who serves deserves respect and recognition. But it seemed like every five minutes here came another forced military tie-in to the game.

That combined with Buck’s identification of all the good guys in the game seemed like a concerted effort to say “Hey, we’re not the NFL!” Which, as much as I’ve grown to dislike the NFL, feels unnecessary.

I could expound further on this topic, but I think Drew Magary wrote way better than I can about it just last week in his weekly politics column for GQ. I recommend checking it out.

Patriotic Correctness Will Doom Us All

Reader’s Notebook, 7/17/18

July 17, 2018 / DB

Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen
I’m a Springsteen fan. But not a super fan. I like large swaths of his music, think four of his albums are pretty amazing, and appreciate his role in American rock music. But I’m not deeply aware of his story, can’t quote his lyrics beyond his biggest hits, and have never seen him live.[1] But I heard from several friends who were casual fans like me that this was a good book. It’s been on my To Read list for years and I decided to pick it up as my time killer around our move.

It is a really interesting book. It checks in at right around 500 pages, which would seem like enough to go into great detail about The Boss’ life. And he really shares, from his earliest childhood memories to where he was in his life when the book was published. He talks relationships. He talks about his own issues with mental health later in his life. He talks about his rise from ambitious band leader on the Jersey shore to one of the biggest stars on the planet. And he talks about his music.

But what I found fascinating about the book was how he only shares so much, letting the breadth of the book disguise its lack of depth.

The one area where this bothered me was in his discussions of his albums. He rolls through his career chronologically, and each time he comes to an album, it gets four, five, six pages and then he moves on. Perhaps he figures he’s spoken enough about his albums over the years, or there are enough other resources for people who really want to know about the nuts and bolts of Darkness on the Edge of Town, for example. I found it odd, though, for a musician who is known for putting great care into his lyrics and music in order to convey the exact message he wanted to share would just provide quick overviews of his most important works. This was highlighted when I tried to sync what I was listening to to where he was in his career. I’d start the chapter and begin listening to the album at the same time and when I was ready for the next chapter, I’d only be three or four songs into the album.

This is true for his discussions of his relationships, too. He provides just enough interesting anecdotes to give the impression you have a deep understanding of his interactions with his first manager, his first wife, or one of his bandmates. But, again, there are never any deep dives.

Those observations may make it seem like I didn’t like the book. That’s not the case; I enjoyed it quite a bit. Springsteen is arguably the most important American rock artist ever, and fan or not, depth or not, I think his story is important for any music fan to understand. I also don’t have a problem with Springsteen holding back. That’s his prerogative as the author. I know I would not want to share all the gory details of my personal life if I was famous and there was an audience for my memoir.

He also managed to avoid all the rock biography cliches. This isn’t a tell-all that brags about his debauchery over the years. Nor is it a sterile, saccharine ghostwritten account that is the literary version of cotton candy. In a very Bruce manner, he wrote a unique autobiography that is worth the time needed to get through it, even if it left me wanting.

The World Made Straight – Ron Rash
This comes from my list of Nick Hornby recommendations I’m still working through. It takes place in the hill country of western North Carolina in the late 1970s and centers on Travis Shelton, a teenager who stumbles into a hidden marijuana field owned by the county’s biggest dealers and the ramifications of his find.

Rash brings in some Civil War history, a few nice supporting characters, and does his best to build toward a twisty ending.

I found the book lacked suspense and some of Rash’s choices confusing. There were several awkward transitions that made me wonder if I had drifted off for a few moments and missed a paragraph or two. I forget why Hornby liked this so much, but it was a miss for me.

The last one is a huge bummer. While I could still see him, I really wish I had seen him in his prime. ↩

The New Local

July 16, 2018 / DB

Now that we’ve been in the new house for three weeks, I think I owe my readers a tour. Not of the house; that would be weird and difficult to do via text. If you want to see it, you just need to schedule a visit!

Rather a tour of our area, Nora, because it is quite different than the old digs.

We have a YMCA that is literally within walking distance. So close that if the girls went together we’d be comfortable letting them go there alone. They just have to cut across the edge of our neighbors’ yard, duck through a break in the tree line, and they’re in the Y’s parking lot. We finally joined last Friday and spent an hour at the pool before it got too hot to stay in the sun. Once our summer membership expires that is where I’ll be doing my daily workouts.

Running just behind our neighborhood, and accessible from the Y’s parking lot, is the Monon trail, the urban path that extends from downtown Indy 20 miles to the far northern ‘burbs. Last week L and I hopped on our bikes and rode down to Broad Ripple and back. It was only about a 5 mile round trip and she said she’s ready to go further next time.

Our old neighborhood was very suburban. We were surrounded by other neighborhoods, parks, gravel mines, and corn fields. The nearest shops and restaurants were all a healthy walk away. In the new ‘hood, we are less than half a mile from a grocery store, a Target, and their surrounding shopping areas, a Walgreen’s and CVS, and[1] a liquor store. We’ve already walked to a restaurant for dinner one night and a yogurt place for dessert another night. There are plenty of fast food options, a pizza place, a great bagel place, and a few other nice restaurants all within a 15 minute walk. As we were strolling home from dinner last week I told S it was almost like living on the Plaza in Kansas City again. Except we live in a house with a big yard instead of sharing walls with our neighbors.

North Central High School is also right up the street from our house. Friday night there was a high school football all star game at their stadium and we could clearly hear the PA announcer from our front steps. NC usually has a really good basketball team – famous alums include Jason Gardner, Eric Gordon, and Kris Wilkes – so I think L is excited to go watch them this winter.

L and I took 15–20 minutes to bike down to Broad Ripple Friday. When we hop in the car, as we did for dinner Sunday, we can be there in about five minutes. Broad Ripple was a 20-minute drive from our old house because of traffic lights, which meant we didn’t take advantage of all its dining opportunities very often. We could usually find something closer and more convenient. Now, thought, we’ve already eaten down there three times in three weeks.

The demographics of our area are quite different than in Carmel, too. Nora leans to the affluent side for sure. We have a pretty fat house and there are plenty that would be well beyond our budget. While new construction like ours isn’t uncommon, Nora tends to be filled with big, beautiful old homes.

That affluence extends to about half a mile north of our house. When you get past the 86th Street shopping corridor you move into an area of older apartments that are home to mostly working class African-American and Hispanic families. That area, and some others within Washington Township, make North Central almost evenly split between white and black students, with a healthy slice of Hispanic students as well. While our girls won’t go to school there, just being in this area will certainly open their eyes to the truth that there are people who look different than us and have very different lives than us.

Allow me to jump back for a minute to talk about our grocery store. I was very excited to have one right around the corner because I go to the store roughly 87 times a week. After three trips to our new one, though, I’m kind of done with it. They never, ever have enough people working the registers and on two trips I spent nearly as much time in line as I did filling my cart. I freaking hate waiting to check out at stores so I’ve given up on that location for all but quick stops. It is also older, with very narrow aisles, and it seems to always be filled with old people who block the aisles and can’t hear you when you say “Excuse me,” and try to squeeze by.

The one thing I will give the local store is that it shows off the area’s demographics. On one recent trip there was a group of African-American women shopping together. Two were in the little moto-carts for folks who can’t get around well. They had a third lady with them and they were cruising around, saying hello to everyone, having a great time. At one point the ladies in the carts got separated and the third lady was walking around yelling for the other, “MONIQUE!!! MONIQUE!!! WHERE ARE YOU????” Then she’d belly laugh. L was with me that day and was rolling.

That same day I got behind an older white man in line and he kept turning around making racial comments about the black lady in front of him. Nice. I will admit she was making an odd transaction. She paid for all her groceries at once, then kept a green pepper separate. I don’t know what she used to pay for the pepper, but she asked for $200 in change from whatever she used. That kicked off a 10 minute process of finding the right person to get into the office to replenish the drawer with cash. While that is certainly odd and out of the ordinary, I’m not sure it was worthy of racial comments from Angry Old White Man in front of me.

One register over, there was a staggeringly attractive white lady[2] in her best workout gear who was screaming at her kids for going over and looking at the gumball machine. They didn’t mess with it in any way. They just looked at it. These girls were like 4 and 3 but something about that set their hottie mom off. Then again, as parents we all have those days when you’re barely hanging on and some tiny thing will provoke all your parental fury.

Quite the gamut in one trip to the grocery store. Shame that the service in there is so bad and I won’t be getting to see shows like this every week.

With a new one coming soon. ↩
I got a little woozy every time I passed her in the aisles. She was well put together. ↩

Friday Playlist

July 13, 2018 / DB

“All We Got Is Time” – Eldoradio. I really can’t find much out about this band or song. It’s a good tune for the summer, which is enough to share it with you.

“One Day Left” – Stars. If you’ve read my music writings over the years, you should know that I love songs and albums about breakups. This is a very specific breakup song: Stars say it is about the last 12 hours you spend with someone. Interesting point of view and a nearly perfect example of what Stars can do when they are locked in.

“Homemade Bliss” – T. Hardy Morris. When it’s too hot to go outside, as it will be here this weekend, make your own bliss at home.

“Glass Jar” – Tristen. This song sounds like something Jenny Lewis would have written/recorded. Hey, guess what? Jenny Lewis provides backing vocals!

“The Gold” – Phoebe Bridgers covering Manchester Orchestra. Not really a vid, but a song only available on YouTube right now. My second-favorite song of 2017 has some serious staying power: I still hear it on SiriusXM at least once a week. And we are going to see MO in a couple months at a small venue here. I love Phoebe Bridgers as well, and her take on the song is wonderful.

Cooking With Gas

July 12, 2018 / DB

Our house is now filled with the sweet, fragrant glory of wireless internet. Comcast finally showed up yesterday to get everything hooked up. Just in time for the second half of the rather glorious England-Croatia match we had cable TV and internet. Those two-plus weeks without them seemed a lot longer. Only 33 days from initial request until completion of installation.

Less than 24 hours into our Xfinity lives, we’re pleased with it so far. Then again, we would be happy with just about any connection at this point. Our internet is way faster than at the old house. We are paying for the speed boost, so it better be. It was pretty cool to watch stuff that used to download over the course of several minutes shoot down the pipe in a matter of seconds. I haven’t tried streaming any video yet, but I imagine that’s going to be better than our old experience, too.

I also figured I would have to set up several wireless access points through the house to make sure we had a strong signal throughout. I bought one, and a Raspberry Pi to control it, so I could at least get started as soon as we had service. But I was pleasantly surprised at how the Xfinity router gets a strong signal throughout the house. Looks like I’ll have to unload the WAP on someone else and find another project to use the Raspberry Pi for.

I spent yesterday afternoon getting everything in the house connected. It’s nice to be able to control our thermostat from my phone again. I need to get our Nest cam installed so I can monitor the outside of our house. I’m debating whether to dive into the world of other home automation devices as well. Right now a lot of them seem to have a higher cool factor than actual functional value, but while S gets to spend hours looking at furniture online, I can research smart light bulbs, DIY home security systems, etc.

Anyway, it’s good to be back in the world of the real internet, where I’m not burning through my phone’s battery to get a weak connection that won’t load anything that contains graphics in less than three minutes. Now I just have to keep the mowing crew and the construction guys next door from destroying our cable, which is currently sitting on the grass until another Comcast contractor comes out to bury it eventually.