D's Notebook

Tag: nostalgia (Page 10 of 11)

Jerseys

October 4, 2005 /

I’ve never been big on wearing sports jerseys. But the unveiling of the new Pacers gear last week got me thinking, for a moment, about purchasing one. I was thinking more of something in M’s size but still, I was in that ballpark. Even when the Cowboys were at their height in the early 90s, I never thought of buying an Aikman, Smith, or Irvin jersey. Now a Haley or Woodson one would have been sweet, but still, the thought never crossed my mind.

Basketball jerseys are problematic because of the sleeveless look. Since basketball is played mostly in winter, it’s tough to go running around in your Bulls <a href=”http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/r/randama01.html”>Mark Randall</a> jersey. Plus, I have skinny arms, so that just makes it more ridiculous.
Baseball jerseys are, to me, the ultimate in wearable sports gear. They clearly identify the team/city. Some, like the Red Sox and Yankees, lack names on the back which brings in the element of only other sports fans will pick up on the significance of certain numbers (A Yankees <a href=”http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers%5Fand%5Fhonorees/hofer%5Fbios/mantle%5Fmickey.htm”>7</a> jersey, or a Sox <a href=”http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/williams_ted.htm”>9</a> jersey, for example). Again though, I never really thought about plunking down the money to purchase a jersey, even back when jerseys were affordable before the retro craze messed with the market.

Well, almost never. In the late summer of 1990 I was contemplating my fall wardrobe and how to allot money for my shopping trips before I went back to college for my sophomore year. I needed a couple pairs of jeans from the Gap. Black Nikes were an absolute must, as this was the beginning of the black shoes trend. Yet for weeks all I thought about was getting a road grey, Pittsburgh Pirates, Barry Bonds jersey. I mean, I couldn’t sleep at night I was thinking about it so much. I had priced one out at $75. That was serious money for a kid who worked two jobs all summer to finance going to an out-of-state college (admittedly one that is famous for cheap tuition). I attempted to justify it by telling myself I would just get one pair of jeans and the cheapest Nikes I could find instead of the Flights I had my eyes on. I tossed and turned over it for days. In my final weeks of work I would obsess about it as I pulled tax forms at the Federal Records Center and wrapped burritos at Taco Bell. I’ve never been one to be on the cutting edge of fashion. I allow trends to develop, find some maturity, and gain acceptance before I suck it up and make purchases to update my wardrobe. But man, a freaking Bonds jersey would set me apart from everyone else on campus. I’d wear it every day. I’d be known as “the guy in the Bonds jersey.” KU was loaded with Royals homers, plenty of people from St. Louis and Chicago sporting their hometown gear. But someone showing up in a Bonds jersey the summer he was blowing up to the tune of .301, .406, .565, 33 home runs, 114 RBIs, and 52 stolen bases? Forget about it.

Looking back, it’s easy to say that not buying the Bonds jersey and going for the two pairs of jeans, two hooded Gap sweatshirts , and Nike Flights was a mistake. It seemed ridiculous at the time to limit myself to one new shirt to get me to Christmas. But given how Bonds’ career progressed, along with the size of his head, if I was hanging out with some guys over beers and casually mentioned I had a Bonds Pirates jersey I bought in 1990 hanging in my closet, I could do whatever I wanted the rest of the night – puke on myself, knock beers over on everyone, start a fight – and still leave with everyone talking about how fucking cool I was.

I did get some consolation, though. The next fall, my mom took a business trip to Pittsburgh and her clients took her to a Pirates game. The <a href=”http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/roster.php?y=1990&amp;t=PIT”>Pirates</a> had just clinched their second of three-straight division titles (Bonds, Bonilla, Van Slyke, Drabek, Bell, Belliard, Bream, King, Lind, Alou…sick) so she picked up a division championship shirt I wore around for the next couple years. According to a wise man, the fact the shirt was purchased at the stadium made it much cooler, too.

 

Tapes

July 28, 2005 /

Almost a year ago, I brought back two large boxes of old cassette tapes from my step-dad’s home in Kansas City. I’ve tallied those up in a spreadsheet and have a couple writing ideas based on the results that I will get to one day.

Yesterday, however, I took the rather new-millennium step of packing all my CDs away. I already had a large box of all the CDs in my collection that were either crap or rarely played. I still had 100 CDs, give or take, displayed in our basement. Since everything is on the Mac or the iPod these days, I figured I might as well save some space and put everything into storage.

While consolidating, I found an interesting cache of cassette tapes in my storage area. Here are some highlights:

One tape, sans case, marked “Moby.” Probably relatively recent, but before I owned a CD burner. Let’s say 2000.
One new C90 Memorex tape, still in wrapper.
Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Classic 1987 tape that was played at least 200 times before I got the CD in 1990.
Three cassettes which contain the final three games of the 1988 University of Kansas basketball team (Kansas State regional final, Duke Final Four, and Oklahoma National Championship games). One day my kids will find these and ask, “You used to listen to games on the radio?!?!”
A tape marked Mix – Dryer. From a high school buddy, a classic hip-hop mix that had to have been copied about six times before I was able to make my own dub. I recall it being quite hissy and needing to turn up my car stereo almost all the way to barely hear it.
A tape labeled New Mix. The imagination races!
Smooth Jams – Vol. 2. In college I made piles of slow jams tapes, just in case some girl was dumb or drunk enough to end up hanging out with me late at night. These tapes were rarely used, sad to say.
Summer ’91 Mix. Pre-Nirvana, so I’m guessing all hip-hop and R&B.
Ed’s Mix. I believe a tape made up of some of the best of my man E-bro’s 12″ single collection, circa 1991-2.

What is actually on all the mix tapes is pure conjecture because I can’t find a tape player anywhere in the house to review them with! How weird is that? We’ve got at least five CD players and an iPod, but nothing to handle an old school cassette tape. I’ll have to dig around in my in-laws home to see if I can track one down and listen to these fine works (assuming they don’t shred as soon as I push Play).

Fun With Yearbooks

July 22, 2005 /

I brought back several boxes of books and other old items from Kansas City two weeks ago and have slowly been working my way through them. Two absolute gems of finds were my sixth and eighth grade yearbooks (I don’t know if seventh grade is just located elsewhere or if it was destroyed thanks to an especially unfortunate picture of your favorite blogger that year). As you can imagine, each yearbook was good for quite a few laughs. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Sixth Grade, 1982-3:

We were new to yearbooks, being 12 year olds and all, so the comments people wrote in mine weren’t all that eloquent. Examples:
“To a good friend! – Robert”
“To a good friend! – Mike”
“To a good friend. See you next year. – Steve” Thanks to Steve for mixing it up a little.

Here’s a fun one: “Always watch the news because someday you’ll make a good politician. – Pam” Clearly Pam was predicting our modern media age where politics is practiced as much on the evening cable news shows as in Washington or any state capital.

“See you this summer. Stay out of jail. – Mike” Sixth grade was the year of my famous assault on an unmarked police car with snowballs, but I don’t recall there being real concern that I would end up in jail. Hmmm. Am I blocking out some important memory?

“Stay sweet! See you next year! – Krickett.”
“Stay sweet. – Jen.” So it wasn’t just the boys who were repetitive. Now I know I was pretty good friends with both of these girls back then, but rereading these makes me think perhaps they didn’t put much thought into what to enter into my yearbook.

Page 5. My picture. Not too bad. Glasses. Hair still pretty straight. Face still boyish rather than teenage-ish. Nothing to be embarrassed about (yet).

“To a nice boy and a good friend. – Mindy.” Smacks of “You’re ok but not cool enough that I’ll still be talking to you next year” doesn’t it?

And now for my favorite line. “Even though your (sic) a nice person, I’m not nice to you. That’s one of my faults. – Stuart.” Brilliant! My high school friends who might read this will know who wrote that and understand it fits his personality perfectly. A sixth grader writing about his faults in a yearbook. Good stuff.

Eighth grade, 1984-5:

Now things were really picking up. Almost everyone was in the throes of puberty. We were heading to high school, so assuming our “Class of ’89” collective personality. Also, I have a lot more signatures this time. I wasn’t terribly popular by any measure back then, so I can only assume it was the joy of getting out of middle school that caused this frenzy of yearbook signings.

“Have fun. Don’t die. – Chad.” Advise for a lifetime.
“Hi. Glad I got to know you after all. Hope to see you next year and over the summer. Stay sweet. – Teri.” Wow, that’s some statement. Did I miss an opportunity with Teri back in the day?
“Have a great summer. See you next year. Maybe we’ll have some classes together. – Cali.” Holy crap, girls wanted to be in the same class as me?

“You’re a big pain when you’re around Jeff. But you’re really, really cool. Really. – Sofia.” Sarcasm?

“You’re in GT. Why are you such a troublesome student? (Sound familiar?) Home Ec’s been cool. See you next year. – Blair.” Ahh, 8th grade Home Ec. I was in our school’s gifted program and was normally a pretty good student, but when I got around a couple of my friends (two of which were in Home Ec), I tended to act out. Our teacher called me out this way in front of class one day, trying to shame me into being good. I think we put powdered laundry soap in the sugar bowls as payback for her yelling at us that day.

“To a real nice guy. Maybe a little weird but nice. Have a good summer. Love – Amy.” Sounds about right. Love?!?!
“It was nice knowing you. Your (sic) a little weird but have a great summer! – Christi.” Another girl who saw me for what I was.
“You’re weird but a good lab partner in science. Have fun this summer but give the girls a break, ok. – Deana.” Ummm…..

“I wish you didn’t give up hoops. – Woody.” Wow, the best basketball player in our class telling me he needed me out there on the court with him next year. Note to self: begin exaggerating athletic accomplishments as a kid.

“Have a great summer. Work hard in BB. – Coach Jeffries.” I had my gym coach sign my yearbook? Pathetic. And he’s pretty much telling me to hang the hoops sneakers up, isn’t he?

“You’re a cool dude. – David.” David, too, is cool.

Page 8, picture. Ooof. Bad glasses (I believe I broke my regular pair playing football right before picture day, which meant I was sporting the dreaded Backup Pair, Bob Griese models from two years earlier. Hair now much wavier, barely under control. I have the visage of a kid struggling with puberty, a lack of confidence, and uncertainty of who he is (Sure, I can see all that just from looking at the picture!). I was just trying to stay out of the way and not make any waves.

“A real trippin’ actor. Stay cool. Have a nice summer. – Rick.” We made some rather impressive movies regarding issues like time travel in our gifted classes. I really should explore converting those to digital and posting them online, don’t you think?

“You are a tough guy, Jeff told me. See you next year. – Mark.” Translation: I don’t know you very well, but my buddy says you’re cool. Maybe if we have class together next year I can decide for myself.

“Tuff Guy. Have a great summer. See ya next year. Your friend – Steve.” I was about 6’1” 130 or so in 8th grade and two people have called me tough. Were they being ironic? Or was that a put down in ’85 and I just didn’t know it?

“You are an outstanding student (I know this because that’s the rumor among all the teachers). Have a good summer and a really good time at RHS. – Ms. Sterner.” Apparently I didn’t perform all that well in her class if she had to judge me based on what she heard in the teacher’s lounge.

“Start your summer off with a job! – Nestor.” Double-entendre in middle school? I’m shocked!

“Thanks for the good time. You’re a good softball player. Have a supreme summer. – Candy.” I gave Candy a good time in 8th grade? You’d think I would remember. Supreme summer smacks of someone trying to coin a term, doesn’t it?

“You are a nice student to have in class. – Mrs. Bailey.” Translation: You were in my class but did not make enough of an impression on me that I can determine if you’ll win a Nobel Prize or shoot people from a bell tower.

“To a cool brain. Stay a brain. – Jeff.” Ok, Jeff, I will.

“You’re really sweet – stay that way! It’s been great knowing you! Maybe we’ll have a class or 2 together next year! – Mindy.” The same Mindy from sixth grade. And until I looked at her picture, I could not remember who she was. I still can barely place her. She clearly had it bad for me back then. Memo to self: If I ever attend a reunion again, avoid her, or have wife with me at all times for protection.

And my personal favorite: “Your (sic) really cool. I’m glad we are friends. I’ll write you. – John.” This comes from a long-time reader of the blog who moved away after our 8th grade year. The proof we wrote each other was sadly put on public display at my wedding two years ago.

There’s your look back at two of my middle school yearbooks. I know I have my two high school yearbooks (thanks to moving around, that’s all I got) here in the house and there are some epic comments in them that probably need to be shared in the future.

The Geeks Are Coming!

April 21, 2005 /

Or maybe in this case, it should be nerds, since I proudly call myself a geek at times. Anyway, Celebration III, the George Lucas-backed Star Wars convention, is in town. 25,000 nerds, most dressed as their favorite Star Wars character, have descended on downtown Indianapolis. Never have I been so proud to live in the suburbs.

Listen, like most males (and some females) of my generation, Star Wars had a profound effect on me. When I was seven. In fact, I recall being so overwhelmed after seeing the movie for the first time that I couldn’t talk for hours afterwards. I remember the next day still being in a state of shock and sitting on our front porch, propping my head on my knees as I tried to make sense of what I had seen the night before. For the next three years, arguably nothing other than the Dallas Cowboys demanded as much devotion from me as Star Wars. I had action figures, comic books, pajamas, sheets, t-shirts. You name it, I had it when it came to Star Wars gear.

When the Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980, I remember waiting in a line that wrapped around the block to see it at the old Midland Theater in Kansas City. But by then, especially with living in the city, I had other things on my mind. The Royals. Little League. KU basketball. Later, Dungeons & Dragons. The other 1000 things that I was interested in over the course of a calendar year. Upon Return of the Jedi’s release, I was excited, and saw it the second day it was out, but ultimately let down. Even at 12, I could tell Lucas had sold out and made a kids movie rather than something that broke conventions, established genres, and would stand the test of time. I was supposed to see The Phantom Menace the night it came out. Had a ticket and everything. But I got stuck at work and missed the show. I still haven’t seen it, nor did I see The Attack of the Clones. Don’t have any desire to see either of those or episode three when it is released. I’ve moved on. Now, Star Wars seems pretty cheesy to me, although it does still make something deep inside me tingle at the memory of how it dominated my life, and the lives of all my friends back in the late 70s. I’ll watch Empire every now-and-then, and still think it’s a phenomenal movie. Jedi still sucks. The brilliant social critic Chuck Klosterman, in his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, has a great section on the effects of Star Wars on our generation. I found this line very telling, &quot;Any normal child was going to be drawn to Skywalker more than Solo.&quot; See, I always wanted to be Han Solo. I’m not sure what that explains more: my personality quirks or my ability to leave the fantasies of a seven year old behind. Maybe both.

Anyway, the majority of the people who are at the convention remind me of people who take The Da Vinci Code a little too seriously. Remember, folks, works of fiction aren’t real.

Classic Christmas Gifts

December 22, 2004 /

My golden age of Christmas gifts ran from roughly age 8 to 13. After that, I really didn’t ask for any big ticket items anymore, since I knew my parents weren’t buying me a car, and my list was dominated by clothes, books, and such. Those pre- and early teen years, though, were filled with items I dreamt about for months before they finally arrived. Here are a few of my all-time favorites:

1979: Mattel handheld, electronic football. Star Wars Millennium Falcon. The football game was a surprise gift from my uncle in New York and my first entry into the digital world. Also my first experience with carpal tunnel syndrome! The Falcon was a pipe-dream thrown on the list to see how guilty my parents felt. They had just ended separation #1 and would be divorced by the following Christmas. I was a Star Wars freak, like most eight year olds at the time were, and figured, “Why not?” I remember my dad taking me to Sears and making me sit in the car in the rain for an hour while he was getting my mom “some towels”. The “towels” turned out to be the Holy Grail of late 70s gifts.

1980: My parents divorce became official two weeks before Christmas. I knew I was going to strike the mother-load as everyone in the family tried to ease my pain. (Like I cared whether my parents were together or not.) This year was bittersweet too, though, since I also knew that our already meager financial status was going to get worse as one income disappeared from the household GDP. I was taking whatever I got, because who knows when I’d next clean up. I did end up getting a lot of sweet stuff that year, but what I remember most is what I didn’t get: an Imperial AT-AT from The Empire Strikes Back. An aunt and uncle went to get one for me, but all the stores they went to were sold out. They gave me a card saying my AT-AT would arrive sometime in January. January came and went, I cried when the 49ers beat the Cowboys, but I never got that AT-AT. Shortly after, I wrote off all things Star-Wars.

1982: Dungeons & Dragons. My mom had read the novel about kids playing D&D, freaking out, and going on killing sprees or something, so as I discovered Tolkien and D&D in the fall of ’82, she kept insisting that I shouldn’t even bother putting the game on my Christmas list. I listed it anyway, and the same aunt and uncle who failed to deliver the AT-AT produced the basic D&D box on Christmas morning, much to my mom’s chagrin. What was fun about this gift was we had all been out at Crown Center in KC shopping together (back when it was a whole mall rather than just a few shops) and I saw the D&D box in one of my aunt’s bags. I pretty much knew I was getting it for a month, which made the anticipation even more pronounced, but I also wondered if it might not actually be for someone else. Sadly, I never lost my mind and wandered in the sewers answering only to the name Frodo during my brief D&D career.

1983: Banner year. I received a Pioneer boombox; ten cassettes (Not albums, not CD, but cassettes) including Journey, Foreigner, Men at Work, and Pat Benatar; and the early 80s Holy Grail, an Atari 2600. I was a year, if not two, behind pretty much all of my friends in getting my Atari, but then that’s what you get for living with a single mom, I guess. I remember that Christmas being bitterly cold, so rather than enjoying the vacation playing football and basketball with my neighborhood chums, I sat in my beanbag playing Pitfall, Pole Position, and Q*Bert while working through my new tape collection for hours on end.

1984: I asked for, and received, an electric typewriter. If there was any doubt I should have gone to J-school as an undergrad, here was the earliest sign. Also, I think this explains why girls pretty much didn’t talk to me until I was a junior in high school. It’s tough to overcome being tall, skinny, wearing thick glasses, and admitting that you wanted a typewriter for your big Christmas gift.

In my wife’s family, we pick names so you don’t have to buy gifts for nine other people. I’m not sure if it’s a function of our age (everyone over 21 now) or just the times we live in, but no one requests cool things. Gloves, candles, maybe a scarf. Oh, cologne of course. It seems that if we want something fun, like an iPod, a PS2, or whatever, we go buy it for ourselves when the mood strikes rather than wait for Christmas. I certainly could have waited to get my iPod, and it would have been super cool to find one under the tree Saturday morning. I suppose that’s yet another reason why I’m excited to be a dad. In a couple more years, M. will drive my insane for two months telling me everything she wants from Santa. But then the payoff will come when she opens her gifts Christmas morning and I see the excitement, wonder, and pure joy I haven’t had since I was a kid.

Observations From The TV

December 17, 2004 /

Things seen on TV last night.

1 – A Charlie Brown Christmas. M. cried, keeping up a tradition her dad started many years ago. I was a sensitive little lad, and the overwhelming negativity of Peanuts animated specials were always too much for me to take. Whether it was the ridicule of Linus while he waited for the Great Pumpkin, or the persecution of Charlie Brown in pretty much every show, I always got upset while watching the Peanuts gang. Things came to a head when I was 5 or 6 and watched Snoopy Come Home. My mom warned me that she wasn’t going to let me watch Peanuts specials anymore if I continued to get so worked up over them. Well, Snoopy Come Home is pretty much the saddest animated show for kids ever, so within 15 minutes I was hiding between the sofa, a large fern, and the crate my parents kept their stereo on quietly sobbing away. My mom peeked into the room, didn’t see me, and searched until she saw me curled into my small hiding space. I had been crying silently up to that point, but when she saw me, I lost it. I don’t think she even let me see that Snoopy did indeed come home, she just sent me to my room, where I wept the good weep of a small boy until I fell asleep. Thankfully, after reading Amazon’s reviews, it seems like a lot of kids in the 70s bawled while watching Snoopy Come Home. I might as well keep M. away from Charlie, Lucy, and Linus from here on because she definitely got the gene.

2 – Fred Hickman hosting Sportscenter. Not sure where he’s been hiding, but the former CNN sports host has surfaced after many years out of the national eye. Young readers may not recall this, but once upon a time Sportscenter actually had competition from CNN. Fred was ok back in the day, I remember stealing a few of his lines for stories in my high school paper, so I’ll hope he keeps his schtick to a minimum and doesn’t try to compete with the other hacks in Bristol.

3 – Speaking of no competition for ESPN, I guess that’s why they can run their Dale Earnhardt movie 3 on ESPN, then immediately after, again on ESPN2 while they’re simultaneously trying to sell a DVD of said movie. Makes perfect sense. I’m sure they promoted their next movie during each commercial break on both networks as well.
The network did show one of the reasons why they have no competition by providing excellent, in-depth coverage of all the action in baseball’s hot stove league during Sportscenter. Then again, they’re showing some high school kid’s press conference in which he’s going to announce what college he’ll be playing football at on ESPNews. This isn’t LeBron James or Greg Oden. Just some really good player most sports fans have never heard of. I think any high ground the network tries to claim when discussing the overexposure of athletes has been lost. Overall, C-/D+ for ESPN last night.

4 – Entertainment Weekly’s Top 15 Biggest Little Things of 2004 on Bravo. Any list that includes coverage of the extended DVD of Showgirls is worth watching. Actually, it was a very good run down of the biggest issues in entertainment this year. A little snarky, but not the surfeit of snark that VH1 will no doubt provide in their year-end shows.

5 – Thanks to the DVR, a couple classic episodes of Cheers. For fans of the early days, TVLand rolled the tapes over last week and are still in season one if you’d like to go back and watch the brilliance of Coach or the early days of Sam and Diane’s relationship. One episode I had recorded was Tortelli’s Tort, in which Carla attacks a Yankees fan who comes to the bar and harasses the Red Sox fans after another bad loss to the Bronx Bombers. Somewhere, Carla Tortelli, Sam Malone, and Ernie Pantuso are smiling now that the Sox have finally won a series.

 

Cologne For Christmas

December 16, 2004 /

Is there a more consistent entry on a man’s Christmas list than cologne? I realized that when I handed my list over to S. the weekend after Thanksgiving. There’s some point in every boy’s teenage years when parents think they require cologne each Christmas. I forget when I got my first cologne, but it was probably in the 12-13 range. I was somewhat chagrined to find a small bottle of Ralph Lauren’s Chaps cologne in my stocking that year. I was by no means a trendy kid, nor a kid who liked to attract attention to himself, so I certainly hadn’t asked for cologne. If I had, I’m sure I would have asked for what every other kid was wearing in the early 80s: Ralph Lauren’s Polo. See, it hasn’t necessarily always been choice on my part that has made me a contrarian. It was out of my hands sometimes.

Anyway, that small bottle in my stocking one year turned into an annual gift of a large bottle of Chaps from my parents. One year my dad even splurged and got me the gift set that included after shave (I was not yet shaving), soap, and deodorant. I remember busting out the deodorant early in 8th grade when I ran out of my regular Speed Stick. Shortly after lunch that day, my underarms broke out in a horrible rash caused by the fragrance in the deodorant. Damn that Ralph! As I said, I wasn’t trendy, so I accepted the annual gift without much fanfare. I didn’t know what else I should ask for, and every once in awhile some confused girl would tell me that I smelled nice, so why mess with an sure thing? At some point, Ralph got a little nutty and came out with a second Chaps fragrance that came in a green bottle. Perhaps in an effort to shake me from the fragrance rut I was in, someone got me a bottle of the alternate version one year. It didn’t go over well. I had a good thing going. I was comfortable with everything about Chaps, from its barely noticeable odor to it’s generic brown bottle. Now someone was trying to mess things up for me. I think I used this new flavor five times at most before the bottle was pushed to the back of the bathroom cabinet, not to be removed and thrown away for roughly ten years.

I went off to college in 1989 and a whole new world of fragrance opportunities opened up to me. Loitering in other people’s dorm rooms while waiting for my turn on Nintendo meant experimenting with new and exciting scents. By November, I decided that Benetton’s Colors cologne was the only thing that stood between me and a huge number of conquests in the second semester. I got the cologne but can’t honestly inform you I had much more success with the ladies in the spring than I had in the fall. Thus began a yearly cycle of me sampling other people’s colognes and requesting something new each Christmas. I’ve lost track of the different scents I’ve donned over the years, although I do know I’ve worn both Hugo and Boss by Hugo Boss, with more success than my attempts to branch out with Chaps.

While I admit I’m wearing better stuff than the insipid Chaps I rocked for most of the 80s, sadly I have fallen back into a rut. This year I asked for either of the Banana Republic colognes for men. I’ve worn and like both options. For the last three years, little else has been sprayed onto my skin. It might be boring, but it is protection. If I didn’t ask for something specific, there’s no telling what I might receive each year. You never know what some long, lost aunt or well-meaning neighbor might try to slip me. I’m only protecting myself, and everyone within smelling distance, if I make sure I get something nice to wear each year.

The question for my readers is: was there a cologne you consistently got at Christmas as a kid, whether you requested it or not?

 

Important Anniversary

November 9, 2004 /

I remember exactly where I was. Sitting on my dorm room bed, reading Newsweek or Time, avoiding studying. The TV was on, but the volume turned down. I looked up and saw Tom Brokaw talking and wondered what was going on at 2:00 in the afternoon that required him jumping on air. I turned the TV and heard that the world as we knew it had changed. Most importantly, I realized my freshman folly of taking Russian could come to an end: the Cold War was over! I dropped that class the next day.
I would imagine the majority of Americans our age think the most important thing to happen in our lifetimes is 9/11. I understand and respect that view, but the fall of the Berlin Wall was a far bigger event, changing the way roughly 1/4 of the world was governed and altering the way the US looked at the world for threats. With the exception of the odd Romanian dictator and his wife, the revolution was largely bloodless.

 

Memorable Football Games

October 1, 2004 /

All joking aside you K-State and Mizzou fans, my football memories from college (and after) aren’t nearly as strong as my basketball memories. That’s not just because I went to a basketball school, although that’s a big reason. With college football, you have 4-6 home games vs. 15 in basketball. You’re generally playing all cupcakes outside the conference schedule as opposed to Kentucky, UConn, Indiana, and UCLA. Road games are less likely to be on TV. Despite all that, I have plenty of memories of sitting nervously on a chair in my dorm room listening to Glen Mason’s troops blowing late leads in Ames, IA and Stillwater, OK. I’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite KU basketball moment from my days in Lawrence, but three moments quickly jump up for football:
The Tony Sands game, when Tony ran for 496 yards against MU in 1991.
The Oklahoma game in 1992. The Sooners went down followed by the goal posts.
The KU-K-State game in 1990. An absolutely perfect day for two programs on the rise to play for state supremacy. Nary a cloud in the sky, a totally packed stadium (Back then maybe 5,000 of the seats were filled with Purples, as opposed to the 25,000 that come to Lawrence now). KU rushed out to a big lead and held on to win by three points. There was a race for the Kansas governor seat that year, so before, during, and after the game planes flew overhead trailing banners for each candidate. People plastered buttons and stickers of their preferred candidate above the school letters on their shirts. It was the perfect fall college day in a small state where almost the entire population was focused on one stadium for four hours.

I reference all of that because tomorrow I’m headed to South Bend for the Purdue-Notre Dame game. The weather isn’t supposed to be as gorgeous as that day 14 years ago, but it should still be a classic upper Midwestern fall day. Two in-state rivals will meet in one of the biggest games of the weekend. Where KU and K-State were fighting for respect a decade ago, Purdue is trying to get a 30 year South Bend monkey off their backs and Notre Dame is trying to prove they’re still an elite program. There just happens to be a governor’s race in Indiana this year, so I expect to see plenty of Kernan and Daniels paraphernalia. Well, the Notre Dame fans will be more concerned with the Illinois senate race or whatever state they all fly in from for the weekend, but you get my point. I won’t have the emotional stake in the game I had in 1990 (I’m officially neutral. While I do enjoy watching Purdue play quite a lot, their colors are far too similar to Missouri’s for me to become a fan. And while I’ve long hated Notre Dame, as I learned last year, there’s something about being in South Bend, seeing Touchdown Jesus, and walking into the stadium that makes you want them to win.) but everything is setting up for it to be a magical day. I just need to make sure I don’t go out too fast tomorrow morning so I can remember everything and report back to you next week.

By the way, although I still hold firmly to my belief that KU will never beat Nebraska in football in my lifetime, could tomorrow be the day it happens? After all, the football gods could ensure that result to punish me for going to a different game rather than ordering the pay-per-view of my game. Nah, it’s still Kansas vs. Nebraska. Won’t happen.

 

Bad Videos

October 1, 2004 /

I’ve got a few short posts lined up for this afternoon. Hopefully I can get everything cranked out around nap times. First off, I’ve been watching a lot of VH1 Classic this week. It’s always fun to see the video for a song you liked 20 years ago but now realize is total crap. Even better is when the video is God-awful. Two examples:
Glenn Frey – “You Belong To The City”. Remember this one? It was the featured song in the first episode of season two of Miami Vice. I really thought the song was the shit, and it was a big reason why I listened to my Miami Vice soundtrack tape every afternoon when I got home from school in the fall of 1985. I had my white, unstructured blazer, a pastel shirt, and some faux linen pants to wear to adult gatherings. Fortunately I realized that wasn’t the kind of thing you wear to school in Raytown, MO. Perhaps I should have, though. I might have gotten my ass kicked, but people would still be talking about it! Anyway, getting back to the video, it’s really, really bad. It pretty much consists of Glenn Frey walking around New York at night, smoking. No less than eight cigarettes are lit, handled, or smoked during the four plus minutes of the song. Throughout the city, he just happens to pass TVs on which we can see Crockett and Tubbs from Miami doing their thing. At one point, a taxi nearly hits Frey, who was crossing with the light. He tosses a few choice words at the cabbie, then his cigarette to complete his point. As he prepares to walk away, he notices an attractive lady in the cab. Later on his endless trek through the city, he spies said woman in a club. He enters, takes a seat across the bar from her, and orders a drink. Behind him is a TV with, you guessed it, Miami Vice showing. Talk about product placement! Strange Man #1 approaches Attractive Woman and attempts to light her cigarette. She rejects him, and they argue. Clearly there is a history here. Mr. Frey takes this all in, finishes his drink, and exits to hail a cab. A hand settles on his shoulder; it’s Attractive Woman! They get in a cab together. As the song ends, he exits what we must assume is her apartment building. It was quite a night for Glenn! I’m not really sure what the point of the video was, other than smoking a lot and stopping for a drink will get you laid by an attractive person you don’t know. Oh, and Miami Vice was cool in 1985.
Quarterflash – Harden My Heart. Remember these guys? Soulful pop music that almost always had the word heart in the song titles. And the lead singer played saxophone. This could be the single worst video in the history of bad videos. The lead singer continually runs through a long, dark hallway. Bare lights hang from the ceiling, various painted doors are on each side. She’s wearing a black leotard and black tights. She should not be wearing such tight clothing. From time to time, she is replaced by a child that looks like her, singing her lines. Eventually, she sits on top of some kind of gravel pile with three youngsters that look like her, all singing. Well, one of the kids is singing with her, the other two are only singing every few lines. I guess a couple more takes or more time rehearsing the lines wasn’t in the budget. During the chorus, the entire band stands in a semi-circle in a darkened warehouse. The floor has been flooded with a couple inches of water, and the band is surrounded by men on motorcycles wearing helmets with visors and tuxedoes. After a few moments of remaining stationary, the motorcyclists start driving in slow patterns around the band. At the end of the song, the lead singer escapes from the long hallway into the aforementioned gravel pit. A bulldozer runs into the “hallway”, which was just a particle board chute, and destroys it as in a KC Bobcat commercial. That’s pretty much what happens, I tried several times to think of better ways of describing it and came up with nothing. It’s totally bizarre, lacks any details to help explain what’s going on, and as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the song. Early 80s videos were full of absurd situations, but most of those were at least funny or artistic. This was probably the strangest and dumbest video I’ve ever seen. And the song sucked too.
Be watching this space for more critiques of bad 80s videos.

 

« Older posts Newer posts »

Archives

© 2025 D's Notebook

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑