I slowed down a little last month. Not much, though. The Shallows - What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains - Nicholas Carr. The internet and high tech are changing the way we access information. And anyone who spends even a little time surfing the net has stories about how their attention span seems to be shrinking, or how they can read something on their computer screen and have trouble retaining it afterwards.
The next installment in the AV Club’s look back at 90s music is up, this time focusing on my favorite band of the era, Pearl Jam. It’s a fair and comprehensive look at the band’s creative highpoint: 1992-1995. I still love them, and buy each new album as soon as it’s released. But there’s no doubting they’ve been, mostly, cruising along for 15 years without much heavy lifting. It is sobering to read through the comments and see the one that says, “My dad is a huge Pearl Jam fan…” Yikes!
I’m going to try something new for the next 30 days. It’s actually something I wanted to do a year ago, but I got sidetracked in my three-month journey that was reading Infinite Jest. I’m finally going to give National Novel Writing Month (Or NaNoWriMo to the kids) a shot. The idea behind NaNoWriMo is that anyone can write a novel, you just need a strict plan and lots of encouragement.
Much to my generation’s chagrin, Michael Jordan has not aged well. He came back one time too many, and when he finally left the league was a rather ordinary professional baller. Since his retirement, he’s had mixed success, at best, as an NBA executive. He offered a mean, bitter Hall of Fame induction speech. And he seems to be constantly cruising the party circuit with younger women. Kind of a dirty old man, not what we expected of the allegedly regal Jordan of his prime.
I’ve had a draft sitting around for awhile that I was unsure whether to post or not. In fact, I think I have three different versions of it sitting on my hard drive. The New York Time’s Nicholas Kristof had a terrific story in last weekend’s Magazine about international philanthropy. Kristof was one of the people who worked hard to raise awareness of the Darfur genocide and continues to write about similar issues.
Even without a Colts game to suck up time, it was a solid sports weekend. I covered an opening round football playoff game Friday. It was a blowout, but the coach I spoke with seems like a good guy and is struggling to turn around his alma mater. It was interesting to listen in as he spoke to his team for nearly 20 minutes on the field after the game, laying out a plan for the offseason.
Let’s cross some more T’s and dot some more I’s. Or whatever. In other words, clearing out some of the junk in my head. High school football playoffs start tonight in Indiana. I’m assigned to what I expect to be a big blowout, with my team on the short end. Several of our teams have tough games in the first round, so there’s a decent chance this will be my last week covering football.
So does McSweeneys. Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff'rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn't it? It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers
It’s already Thursday and I’ve yet to post anything? Weird. I’ll blame the nice weather and the time we’ve been spending outside. Also, I’m contemplating a post about Turner Gill, but struggling with how/what to write. Trust me, there will be something about Turner here soon. In the meantime, here’s a fascinating article from a series at the Onion’s AV Club about 90s music. In this edition, the author examines the relationship between Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain during the period in which alternative rock rose to prominence.
Recently I picked up a copy of Def Leppard’s seminal 1983 album Pyromania. I had been waiting for years for it to show up in the iTunes or Amazon MP3 stores, to no avail. After hearing a couple songs in the pregame mix at a high school football game, I thought it was time to finally take the plunge and order the CD. This was a big deal. First, I don’t buy CDs anymore.
I’ve mentioned poor EHS several times when sharing my sports reporting exploits. They are the team that had A) a seven-year losing streak and B) have won only five games in the past decade. It was my week to draw the short straw1 and for the first time, I headed down to cover one of their games. It promised to be a long night. The previous week they played, and beat, the only school they’ve defeated in the past ten years.
It’s tough for dads to be one of the girls. We go to the park; it’s me and the moms. We go to the Target, it’s me and the nannies. This is my reality. And it drives me nuts when people feel the need to make a big deal of it. This quote is from a recent Matt Villano column in the New York Times Magazine’s parenting section. Since NYT articles tend to disappear behind a log-in wall after a few days, the gist is a stay-at-home dad takes his daughter to a library event, and everyone makes a fuss over him being the only dad there.
I was in the zone. I was crushing books, knocking them out at better than a book-a-week pace. Then I ran into a wall. I still got some things done last month. The 80-Yard Run: A Twenty-Week, Coast-to-Coast Quest for the Heart of High School Football - Theron Hopkins. A buddy who is deeply involved in high school football recommended this awhile back. The author takes a trip around the country over the course of a fall, each week profiling a different high school football program.
I’ve been busy working so far this fall, if you call getting out once a week busy. So if you’re interested in what I’ve been doing, plunge in for some navel-gazing. I’ve covered four football games, a county championship tennis match, and am set to cover both tennis and football again this week. Three of the four weeks I’ve covered football, I’ve followed the same team, WHS. They were expected to be quite good this year, but the first two games I saw they lost.
The Onion nails it. 1 in 5 Americans Believe Obama is a Cactus ”I don't care what he says or what his people say or what anybody else says," 48-year-old Kansas resident Jake Nolan told reporters. "The guy's a cactus, plain and simple. I mean, Christ, look at him."
As I believe I mentioned before, I recently went through a bit of a David Lee Roth-era Van Halen phase. For a couple weeks their songs were in high rotation on my various digital music devices. That got me thinking. How would I rank the DLR songs? More to the point, what are my five favorite DLR songs?1 Purely subjective and subject to change, of course. “Runnin' With the Devil” - The first single that the band wrote, it was a minor hit.
I remember the good old days, when September meant a new round of TV shows to be excited about. There would be a bevy of new comedies, some action shows (Air Wolf, The A Team), and maybe a drama that interested me. By November I likely would have only stuck with a couple of them, but for a TV freak like me, it was akin to Christmas morning, with each night bringing something new.
A quick update on the girls. M. is now a month into her real Catholic school experience. All continues to go well, although she is crankier in the morning than she was the first couple weeks. She has a BFF, and they’ve hosted each other for post-school playdates. Obviously a lot can change, but I keep thinking that my wife met her best friend when they were six or seven. It may be someone else, but there’s always the chance that someone in M.
If I’ve learned one thing following the Colts over the past seven seasons, it’s that you don’t overreact to how they look in the preseason. They’re a well-oiled machine and will always bring it when the games matter. So pay no attention if the defense is porous, the offensive line weak, the running game non-existent. Thus my confidence in picking them to win the AFC this year. I may have to rethink that.
I expected my weekend in Kansas City to be good. A surprising performance by the KU football team made it even better. First off, thanks to the R’s and B’s for hosting me last week. And thanks to Mary Y for insisting I attend her 30th birthday blowout. That alone would have made for a fine weekend. I was not looking forward to the KU - Georgia Tech game all that much, to be honest.