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.
Quite the week-plus it has been. I was so busy in the lead-up to our spring break trip to Alabama that I left two in-progress posts behind when we left town on April 1. My apologies! As they were both time sensitive, they shall be filed away in my local archives in case they can be used sometime down the road. Anyway, we had an excellent week. A fortuitous week, as well.
Note: I began this Thursday morning but failed to post it. Please excuse my use of what appears to be the incorrect tense. Spring break is almost here. Today is the girls’ last day of school before vacation. I have a full day of laundry, errands, and packing ahead of me. So a few quick notes before I jump into all that. TV I did not watch season one of Fargo, but after hearing so many raves about it, I set the DVR to record season two.
To wrap up my Louisville weekend review, some notes about what else I did down there in my brief visit. My KC homie E$ flew into Indy Friday and we headed south around lunchtime Saturday. He had been to the ‘Ville many times so had a solid plan for how to spend our pregame hours. First, we dined at Mark’s Feed Store[1], an excellent name for an establishment that specializes in smoked meats.
This post-Louisville entry centers on one particular moment of my visit, and explains why I missed the first four minutes of the game on Saturday. I took my fancy camera to the ‘Ville. I got a few decent pictures with it, but each time we made a pit stop, I questioned whether I should leave it with the truck or keep lugging it around. It became problematic when we toured the Louisville Slugger factory and museum.
So yeah, the purpose of my weekend visit to Louisville ended up sucking quite a bit. That didn’t mean the whole weekend was a bust, though. There are quite a few stories to share, so I think I’ll split this up into two or even three posts to keep it manageable/readable. Let’s start with the game and KU going out of the tournament a week too early. It was insanely frustrating watching the game in person.
Sweet 16 day has arrived! I woke up with a little nervousness, but with a bigger feeling of excitement. As I always say, this is the best week of the tournament, and it is much easier for your mind to contemplate bigger scenarios when there are a maximum of four games left in your favorite team’s season. Of course, being excited makes me nervous, so I’m sure by approximately 9:00 eastern tonight, I’ll be a big ball of frazzled nerves, snapping at the kids and worrying about whether I’m sitting in the right spot on the couch, if I’m drinking the right beer, etc.
Last week C marched in the Indianapolis St. Patrick’s Day parade, as is custom for third graders at St. P’s. It was a fabulous day, especially compared to when M marched two years ago. It was bright and sunny, in the mid–50s when the parade began, and eased into the low 60s by the time it ended. Two years ago, it was maybe 30, with windchills much lower, and flurries blowing around.
Some first weekend of the NCAA tournament! There are no great surprises as we glance at the sixteen teams still standing. When Gonzaga and Syracuse are the lowest seeds still playing, you can’t really call them Cinderellas. But there was a lot of fun in getting to this point. First, my Jayhawks. A nearly perfect first weekend. Which means nothing going forward, other than they’re still playing. Which is something the last two KU teams could not say.
You know, for all this talk about how wide open this year is, I find myself agreeing with all the folks who are not going out on any limbs in picking their Final Four. I think a lot of that can be explained away rather easily: while there were no dominant teams in November, December, and January, in February and March a few teams did separate themselves from the pack.
For several years I’ve been trying to get M to read the Harry Potter series. She loves reading to begin with, and is especially fond of lengthy series, so it seemed like a perfect match. However, each time I recommended the books to her, she said she wasn’t interested. I would point out other kids her age, or even younger, who had read them, but she always said no. That finally changed a couple months back.
Yep, I’m frightened. Sure, there’s the normal fright that comes this time of year when you support a school that has been a top-four seed for nearly two decades and has a number of early flameouts over that span. There’s the hand-wringing that fans of every school go through when they begin breaking down the bracket, sure that their favorite team has an unfairly difficult path to get to the Final Four.