Finally back to mixed media. Our Spotify playlist features some fine tunes for your listening pleasure and our vid is a (very) old-school jam that is sure to brighten your day. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Save Me” - Fernando. A pretty fabulous rootsy track from the Argentina-born, Portland-based artist. REM alum Peter Buck helped out on his latest album, and this track. “The Only One” - the boy i used to be. These cats are from Portsmouth, England, UK.
You know what you all need? You all need a damned spring sports update, that’s what you need! Kickball This was our first season with two kickballers. Which made for all kinds of scheduling fun, believe me. Fortunately, thanks to having friends on both teams, the girls always got to all of their games, even if S or I couldn’t be there. M had her best season yet. She was very excited that, since no St.
Well, well, well, we now have two double-digit kids in the house! C turns the big 1–0 today. A birthday divisible by five means you get a big party in our family, and C cashed that in on Saturday. She had five friends over for the requisite pizza, cupcakes, and then a very special spa evening. After a week of thorough cleaning and a couple well-placed tarps on the floor and against an especially grungy garage door, our garage was magically transformed into a nail salon and spa.
I had a very busy Friday; I left the house with the girls in the morning and didn’t return until after school. Then I had to dive right into the yard work as C’s birthday party was Saturday and we had a softball game plus bad weather to work around. So apologies for not sharing any music Friday. To kick off this week, I thought I’d share this mini-movie of the scenes before a recent Tyne-Wear Derby: the rivalry between Newcastle and Sunderland in the British Premier League.
Yikes, I forgot to share my April books. Which is kind of understandable, as it was just a two-book month. A beast followed by a palate cleanser. My Struggle, Book 2: A Man In Love - Karl Ove Knausgaard. My feelings about this mirror my feelings about Book 1: I keep wondering why I’m enjoying it so much. Why am I spending three-plus weeks to wade through Scandinavian navel-gazing? Something about it is compelling, that’s for sure.
Last weekend was a very important one on the family calendar: the opening of the Local Vacation Spot (LVS for you newbies) and the putting-in of the boat. These weekends are often good for a laugh or two, as S and I bump up against our many limitations in mechanical knowledge and ability. I’m happy to say the weekend was an almost complete success. We picked the boat up and got it down to the lake without incident.
Ok, I think the Internet is officially done. Someone has created the perfect website. There’s no need to try anything else, because this one simply cannot be topped. How Music Taste Evolved
On the rare occasions I go see live music, it is always a big event. Probably a little bigger than it should be. The easy way to fix that is to go to more shows, obviously. But there’s a part of me that likes going only when it’s a band that I really want to see. Friday night was the perfect example of that. My favorite band of the last 7–8 years, Frightened Rabbit, made their first-ever stop in Indianapolis.
A classic bait-and-switch subject line! You might think I’m about to drop some thoughts on the races for the Democratic and Republican nominations for president, as we are on the eve of the Indiana primary. You would be thinking wrong, though. My interest in and passion for politics has been beaten up, brutalized, and nearly destroyed over the last eight years. Most of that is a result of the toxic political climate we live in, an era where it isn’t enough to disagree with someone and work to prevent their policies from being implemented.
I’ll run through a whole spring sports roundup next week. But one quick, funny story worth sharing now. Wednesday L had soccer practice and C had a softball game at the same time, at the same complex. I dropped C off at her diamond, walked L over to her field, and then returned to the softball side and dropped my chair beyond the left field fence. The girls were still warming up and I heard a group from the other team talking, in excited, high-pitched voices, about something that had to do with the Indiana Pacers.
I’m already getting pre-show nerves for the Frightened Rabbit show tomorrow night. I first heard the band on June 20, 2008[1] and pretty much since then they’ve held the title as my Favorite Current Band[2]. I’ve seen them on TV a few times, listened to a few streamed shows, but this will be the first time I get to stand in the same venue as them and hear them play. Can they deliver on nearly eight years of build-up?
Man, were there some great Prince-related articles over the past week. Here are some of my favorites. Joe Posnanski used Prince’s death as an excuse to look back on his epic Super Bowl halftime show. Although the Colts won that night, my biggest memories of the evening are Prince’s performance and how cold it was that night when I took the trash out after the game.[1] What a crappy game.
We all thought that I might change as I got older “Wish I Was Sober” - Frightened Rabbit Every band that survives its lean, early days and captures some measure of public attention and success must grapple with the challenges of how to keep the magic going as they move into their musical middle age. Success opens new doors, and bands will quite often make different choices as they step into their 30s.
I’ve always secretly made fun of those folks who get all emotional when a public figure dies. No matter what effect their work had on your life, I didn’t understand how an actor or singer or whoever dying would cause you to show public grief.
I think I understand those people a little more today.
Yesterday sadness for Prince’s death slowly grew within me. I spun his tunes, I listened to the two SiriusXM stations that had his songs on repeat and were taking calls from fans, I watched MTV - which had his videos in constant rotation - and VH1 - which was showing Purple Rain on repeat - and checked in on the news channels to catch parts of their pieces. I read tribute pieces online and watched the handful of videos of his live performances that he could not get removed from YouTube. All that slowly combined to make me pretty damn sad by the end of the night. At one point I was reading tributes that other celebrities had posted. While scrolling through those, “The Cross” came on my iPad and it was almost too much. Watching the performance of “Purple Rain” at about 12:10 AM with some bourbon in my system was not a dry-eyed moment.
I thought about how silly that was. Yes, I was sad that a man who meant so much to me had died suddenly. But why? I had not bought an album of his in nearly 20 years. The last album of his that I put in high rotation was Diamonds and Pearls in 1991. The majority of my best memories of Prince came from 30 years ago.[1] Those songs, videos, and movies are not disappearing with his death. I’ve been listening to them again all morning.
So why do we get sad when a person we never knew dies?
I guess a chunk of that sadness is actually our way of saying thanks. Regardless of your view of what happens to people when they die, I think being sad is a way of sending out signals that you appreciate what that person did when they were alive to contribute to your happiness.
There’s probably some kind of yearning for our youth wrapped up in it, too. But since I hate that kind of discussion, I’ll skip it.
Our own, personal grief certainly gets wrapped up in it as well. I never saw Prince live. I was supposed to back in early 1998, but came down with the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had and sold my ticket. I was so sick I went to my mom and step-dad’s house for two days and she brought me Advil and Sprite and chicken noodle soup while I laid on the couch moaning. I was thinking of that last night, and remembered that concert was about six weeks before my mom died. I’m sad my step-dad is gone, too.
You can’t help but pull these moments that are specific to your life into this larger, universal moment of sadness.
I was comforted that, through Facebook, texts, emails, and regular conversations yesterday, I saw that so many of my friends were having similar feelings. Well, I’m not happy so many of my friends were sad, but you know what I mean.
I’ve never felt that way I do now after someone I admired, but was not related to, died. In a weird way, I guess there’s no better tribute than that.
And now, “Sometimes It Snows In April” just came on and I think I need another minute to myself.
I used to cry for Tracy because I wanted to see him again
I was minutes away from posting an album review when the news about Prince dying hit. What a terrible day. I admired Bowie, but he was hardly vital to me growing up. When he died I wondered what aging rocker death would have the biggest impact on me. It would be sad when McCartney and Ringo died. Plant and Page, Daltry and Townsend would cause reflection. But those guys were all of my parents’ generation.
Finally. L finally got to watch The Force Awakens Sunday. I believe that she thought it was worth the wait. We had a pretty busy weekend, so I was worried we would have trouble squeezing it in. But we popped it into the player after breakfast yesterday and were able to knock it out before her first soccer game of the season. I have been very guarded about spoilers ever since I saw the movie in December.
This story has gotten a lot of attention over the past couple days, so odds are many of you have already read it. But it’s worth sharing, if only because it proves what we learned in Finding Nemo: all drains lead to the sea. Octopus slips out of aquarium tank, crawls across floor, escapes down pipe to ocean Om Malik writes about how our relationship with photography, and the meaning of the photos we are taking more often than ever, is changing.
I’m getting a little behind on my reading. I did knock out four books last night - that includes a photography book not listed below - but we’re halfway into April and I’m only halfway through my current book, with about 300 pages to go. Spring break, kid sports, watching baseball most evenings, and a huge book have ground things to a halt. I’ll get back on book-a-week track over the summer.
Our spring sports season begins today. M and C both have their first kickball games, while L has a soccer practice. All at the same time. At three different locations. This is my life on Wednesdays for the next month. C is also playing softball, so there are a couple nights where she has both a kickball and softball game. Fortunately that happens just twice so she can miss one of each and we won’t offend either coach too much.
A lot happened while I was away from the computer last week. Not everything demands comment. But four events in particular do require a few words. The Final Four I didn’t watch much of any game. I was astounded by Villanova’s destruction of Oklahoma in the semifinals. I’m not good at math, but that was like a 172 point turn-around from when the teams played last December.[1] I got to see bits during the run when the Wildcats blew the game open.