By all accounts, events downtown are going swimmingly. The locals have shown up in force, setting attendance records for the official NFL events. The weather has been great. My fears, that the national press would be ripping the choice of Indy as a Super Bowl host, have so far not come to fruition. In fact, many national writers seem smitten with the city so far. But, strangely, all that is secondary to the looming resolution of the thing on most local football fans' minds.
<p>In case you’ve been wondering who this <a href=“http://www.wussy.org/">Wussy</a> band is that has topped my listening stats each of the last two weeks, here’s a mini-review of their latest album, <em>Strawberry</em>.</p> <p>I’ve been a fan of Wussy for several years. The Cincinnati band was long a staple of <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOXY.com">WOXY</a>'s playlists back when the station was A) still in Cincy and B) still broadcasting. But until a couple weeks ago I had only listened to individual Wussy tracks rather than an entire album.
When the new Giants/Jets stadium was constructed, without a roof, and New York was awarded the 2014 Super Bowl, plenty of people talked about how great it would be if a Super Bowl was played in true winter conditions. Like a playoff game in Green Bay or Chicago, why shouldn’t the NFC championship be decided in the elements. While there were some naysayers (“Why should the title come down to a kicker slipping in icy conditions?
Greetings fellow citizens. I am here to talk about the State of the Blog. I can report that the State of the Blog is changed. Read on for the news. It’s been a whole five months or something, thus it was time to implement some changes to Ye Olde Blog. I’ve bored you in the past (if you’ve chosen to read through such posts) explaining why I changed this or that.
This is a terrific article on several levels. It examines some of the inside story of the development of the iPhone. It points out fundamental demographic advantages that China has over the U.S. And it gets into the potential moral delimma Apple, and other successful US technology companies, has when balancing profitability, share owner value, and the needs of the American worker. Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.
My nearly eight years as a stay-at-home parent have been filled with humorous moments that come with being the rare dad who is with his kids all day. Random kids who come up and start telling me about their potty habits. Boys who mistake me for their dad because I’m the only guy around. And, my personal favorite, kids yanking down their mothers' shirts while I’m talking to them. Friday, L.
Indianapolis is now on the clock in two ways. Sure, there’s the countdown to April’s NFL Draft. And now, with the conference championship games out of the way, the final countdown for the Super Bowl is on. In two weeks, a city where you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays1 will host America’s biggest single-day sporting event. Anyway, a couple of great games on Sunday. Perhaps not artistic masterpieces, but tremendously entertaining.
The hypocrisy that permeates big-money college sports takes your breath away. College football and men’s basketball have become such huge commercial enterprises that together they generate more than $6 billion in annual revenue, more than the National Basketball Association…And what does the labor force that makes it possible for coaches to earn millions, and causes marketers to spend billions, get? Nothing. The workers are supposed to be content with a scholarship that does not even cover the full cost of attending college.
First off, the Saints-49ers game last Saturday was fantastic if you were just an unaffiliated person watching. I imagine it was fun for San Francisco fans, too. The terrific early performance by the ‘Niners’ D. The inevitable Saints comeback. And the frenetic final four minutes. Great, great stuff. The Colts are making progress. First, the Polians were shown the door and Ryan Grigson was brought in to remake the franchise. Yesterday, Grigson fired coach Jim Caldwell.
Perhaps no one has noticed, but I have yet to write anything lengthy about KU basketball this season. There are a couple reasons for that - which I’ll get into in another post at some point - but the bottom line is I have a different relationship with the team and with college basketball in general this year. In fact, Monday’s game against Baylor was the first game I watched from start-to-finish all season.
We lost a dear friend yesterday. C.’s fish, Spike, passed on to the great fishbowl in the sky. It was not unexpected, as he hadn’t been right for months. That didn’t make the loss any easier for her. He had always been an odd fish, but since the fall he spent most of his time curled up on the bottom of his bowl. While his brother Sparkle would swim around and eat his food as soon as we put it in his bowl, Spike just sat in the rocks.
So, I ’m kind of late on this, since the BCS title game was Monday and all, but I might as well get it off my chest. I think the BCS is a gigantic scam. Now hold on. Before you go clicking somewhere else, thinking to yourself, “Of course it’s a scam. You’re just now seeing that?” allow me to clarify. I’m a long-time BCS hater. I remember one night in late 2003, while traveling for business, I couldn’t sleep because I was so wound up mentally drafting an anti-BCS post.
Finally, the holidays are over. M. is back in school today, which means we get to work our way back into our normal routine. She reminded me last night that I utterly failed at the one thing I wanted to accomplish with her over the break: master tying her shoes. Oh well, she’s waited this long. It won’t kill her to put it off another month. She can read a 150 page book in a night, but she can’t tie her own shoes.
The Lawrence Journal-World just completed their reader-driven contest to determine the best KU basketball player of the last decade. Weird timing, yes, since apparently everything that happened in the spring of 2000 gets pushed back to the 90s. But fun anyway. Some thoughts. It was interesting looking at their brackets - they went position-by-position - and realizing how unique KU’s pool of talent over that period was. Until a year ago, no one had left after a single season in Lawrence.
Over the weekend, word leaked that MLB was considering a plan that would dramatically reshape the game. One team would move from the National to American league, leaving two, 15 team leagues. Then, all divisions would be scrapped and the teams in each league would compete for five post-season slots. I think this is horrible news, and not for the reasons you would expect. I think it’s horrible because it’s a great idea, yet most insiders feel it has little chance of actually being adopted.
Six wins in four weeks. 1 Four of those wins came in their final at bat. It appears the Royals may indeed suck this year. You can feel the enthusiasm waning as frustrated fans mutter “Same old Royals.” Danny Duffy can’t throw strikes. Joakim Soria looked lost (but may have been found). Alcides Escobar can’t hit and Ned Yost refuses to pinch hit for him late in games. Outfielders let fly balls drop.
Can’t complain. That’s my simple, two word summation of our week in Hilton Head. I know you expect much more than that from me, though. I will do my best no to disappoint. Our home was gorgeous. S. spent many, many hours researching the options and looking for something that would hold a significant chunk of our family and be a nice place to stay. She found the perfect place. We stayed in the Forest Beach area, which is on the ocean-side of the island.
By the time you read this, we should be several hours from home in the Family Truckster - a.k.a. Swagger Wagon a.k.a. Daddy’s Blue Van - heading south. We will pass near Cincinnati, go through Lexington and Knoxville, then turn east towards Asheville. We will spend Friday night visiting with friends there and then continue southeast Saturday until we can continue no further. Our final destination is Hilton Head, South Carolina, where we will be spending a week with the kids, three aunts, one cousin, and two grandparents.
A long-winded, semi-diary of last night’s storms in Indiana. Crazy week. If I’m not mistaken, the bulk of my regular readers have heard tornado sirens and taken cover at some point in the past 72 hours. Hopefully all of you made it through this insane weather safe and sound. Last night was our turn to get Mother Nature’s hammer. To make it even more fun, S. was working, so it was just me and the girls.
Piggy-backing a bit on my post about cloud-based music systems last week, my baseball post for this week will focus on the changing broadcast technology of the game. I first became a baseball fan in 1978. But I really went head-over-heels for the game in 1980, when we moved to Kansas City. Suddenly I could listen to every single Royals game. Every week or so a couple road games were on TV.