What a busy few days. Let’s see if I can cram some of what’s happened, and is about to happen, into a post of reasonable length. We spent last weekend enjoying a fine Indiana freshwater recreation site with some good friends and family. The weather continued to be ridiculously hot, but being in the water was a fine way to cool off. The girls learned how to jump off a dock, pedal a paddle boat (or is it pedalboat?
Def Leppard is rerecording their back catalog because of an argument with Universal over the digital distribution rights of their original songs. Despite being the slickest of the 80s hairbands, it took some effort. ”You just don't go in and say, 'Hey guys, let's record it,' and it's done in three minutes," Elliott notes. "We had to study those songs, I mean down to the umpteenth degree of detail, and make complete forgeries of them.
I love it when events coincide with specific dates so that they are easy to remember. Example: earlier this year we purchased a new lawn mower. S. wondered how long we had our old one1 and I said, “I can tell you exactly when we got it.” “OK, what game was that day?” She knows me well. “It wasn’t just a game, although that was the same day that KU lost to Georgia Tech in the regional finals.
For a minute or two, I thought Italy had a chance in Sunday’s Euro 2012 final. But then Spain got rolling, picked apart the pressing Italians, and rolled to a dominating 4-0 win that gives them a legitimate claim to be the best soccer team ever and in the conversation for best sports team ever.1 Those moments of hope were delicious for us fans of the Azzurri though. Their destruction of Germany in Thursday’s semifinal was especially sweet.
To start, a link back to the beginnings of my blogging life and my 2003 draft breakdown. I just reread it and it’s fun, especially my panning of Miami drafting D. Wade. I actually have a few decent observations in there. And a lot of inside stuff that makes no sense A) nine years later and B) without watching the draft. Last night I only watched bits and pieces of the draft, so this year’s summary will have less snarky comments about suits, crying mothers, bad commercials, etc.
Ahh, more Gen X navel gazing about the changes in the music world. I’m sorry, I can’t avoid reading these pieces, linking to them, or adding some comments of my own. I think most of that is because this profound change in the technology of music has come right at the time my generation shifted into true adulthood: the getting married, having babies, and getting deep into your career part of adulthood.
First, a quick story from my youth. I once had a babysitter who had stacks of newsstand tabloid magazines. I recall them mostly being The National Enquirer but I believe she had some of the really crazy ones, too. Anyway, I liked to read and since the TV was usually on soaps or the news, I would hide in the corner and work through the latest celebrity gossip. At some point I began throwing the things I learned into casual conversations elsewhere.
After a busy weekend, some sports thoughts. LeBron got his ring. While I was pulling for OKC, I’m glad the national nightmare of LeBron not having an NBA title finally came to an end. I enjoyed his enjoyment of getting the proverbial monkey off of his back. LeBron has made a few poor choices in the PR side of his career, but for the most part he’s been an exemplary professional.
Are the Royals, in a rather passive-agressive manner, trying to suck us fans back in? While they’re still generally mediocre, they’ve won enough games over the past month to get within spitting distance of both .500 and first place. As I write this they are 31-36 and just 4.5 games behind Cleveland. Far better than they were six weeks ago, when they wrapped up a brutal April. I say passive-agressive because of how they’ve reached this point.
File under: Sometimes otherwise smart people do dumb things. I’ve never been in a tanning bed in my (almost) 41 years on earth. Until Monday. Thanks to a meeting of two circumstances1 I decided to take the plunge and get a little unnatural color Monday. I knew going in there were risks. S. will occassionally use the tanning beds at our gym and while she gets some color after a day or two, she often has to go through what appears to be an uncomfortable red-pink stage to get to the brown.
One of the many cultural icons of my generation is the 1992 US men’s Olympic basketball team: The Dream Team. While this oral history of the greatest team ever is good, I must admit I was a little disappointed by it. It doesn’t seem nearly long enough. I know there were more great stories that could have been repeated. Johnson: Oh man, the best basketball I ever played was during those practices.
I’ve been slowly working my way through the most excellent Joe Strummer documentary The Future Is Unwritten. If you’re a fan of the punk rock prophet, or just a fan of music in general, I highly recommend it. The film features audio from the late Strummer cut with interviews with people he was close to through his life. Family members, friends, lovers, rivals, bandmates, people he inspired, etc. The only downside is none of the people are identified when they speak, so I have no idea who a few of them were.
It’s been a busy start to the summer, thus the slow rate of posts here last week. I can’t promise it will increase, but know it’s because we’re enjoying the season. For example, here’s how we spent the weekend. Friday the girls got to go to Target and spend some of the money they’ve saved. L. got a turtle from Nemo that really swims. M. and C. both got (yet another) Barbie.
Back in mid-May 1990, when our circle of high school friends was retuning home after our first year away at college, a good friend was insistent that it was going to be “the greatest summer ever.” It’s tough to measure these things accurately, but I do recall that being a pretty solid summer.1 Obviously that became a running joke each summer after that, and it’s always fun to think of it as we transition into our summer schedules.
One last entry for the 2011-12 academic year. Monday I covered a baseball sectional championship game for a christian school that we normally don’t cover. Part of that is because this is the first year the school, GCA, has fielded a baseball team. I’m really not sure why we don’t cover them in basketball all season, but that’s not my decision. Anyway…it was quite the accomplishment for them to make the sectional final in their first year, obviously.
As I mentioned earlier, Friday was field trip day for M. with the bonus of having me tag along as a driver/chaperone. We were going to Conner Prairie, one of those old time re-creation towns that is on the site of one of the first white settlements in Central Indiana. It’s also five minutes from our house and I had never been there in almost nine years living here. Hey, we’ve been busy!
We’ve reached the manic, two-week period of spring in which all the high school sports cram their playoffs into the final days of the school year. Which means many chances for me to work. In theory. This week I grabbed the plum assignment, the 4A softball sectional in which four of our teams were playing. Wednesday I was to cover both semifinals, including the #2 ranked team in the state (CG, one of our schools) and then the championship game on Thursday.
I wanted to write something about the passing of Donna Summer. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized her music never really qualified as “mine.” Sure, I heard her songs a million times growing up, but her peak - 1976-79 - came before I was reposnible for the music that I listened to. I heard tons of Donna Summer songs because I had young parents who listened to pop music, especially disco.
I have a few friends who are masters of the random celebrity encounter. They have no problem either approaching or breaking the ice with a famous person and have many stories about running into Quincy Jones, Milton Berle, Dave Matthews, or Lawrence Taylor, to name a few. On the other hand, in those rare situations when I see a celebrity, I tend to sneak glances, elbowing and whispering to the people next to me, and keep my distance.
Mid-May is always a big time for C.. Most years her birthday falls right around the end of her school year, which turns our already exciteable daughter into an extra-charged bndle of energy. That’s really the case this week. She turns six today. Tomorrow she “graduates” from kindergarten.1 Following graduation is St. E’s annual year-end bicycle parade. It’s all about C. this week. In addition to the normal birthday night dinner, we always let our girls choose a dinner out the week of their birthday.