Fire The Headline Writer

rangers
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

Or maybe the GM is so caught up in the trade deadline that he felt he had to do something. Why not trade someone from your own team to.....your own team.

 

Jet Blue, Rachael Ray & Dumb People

I took my virgin voyage on Jet Blue last week. I think they're the only airline that offers non-stop service from Boston to Austin, TX and I am all about flying direct these days. I've heard from so many people how great Jet Blue is, so I was anxious to give 'er a shot. The result? It's an airline. I mean, really. The seats and the legroom are pretty much the same. The snacks and beverages are pretty much the same. The flight attendants are pretty much the same. All told, it's not all that different, with one glaring exception: DirecTV and XM Radio. Here's a smattering of what I enjoyed on my ride back to Boston on Friday:

• Breaking news that Carlos Lee had been traded to the Texas Rangers. I love the trading deadline! I mean, I would have been fine if I had found out after the flight, but it was my first real "breaking news" that I watched live on a plane. That's gotta count for something, right? It sure beats my boss's first experience watching breaking news on a plane: the September 11th coverage. Yikes. Not sure about you, but I wouldn't want to have seen that while riding on a plane, oh no.
  

• Rachael Ray. This is the bodacious cooking chick who has made a gazillion dollars with all of her television shows and books claiming that you too can make 30-minute gourmet meals - quick and easy! Tell you what, darling, come to my house and prove to me that you can - start to finish - really make scallops and steak, steamed asparagus and a fresh salad with homemade strawberry balsamic vinegrette dressing all in 30 minutes and I'll pay you $500 directly for each of your books. Nice profit margarine for you (like that food reference? Clever, inn't?). But nobody in the world can actually do it, so I'm not worried.

• Hitting channels 13 and 14. Repeatedly. Back and forth. Channel 13 is the Weather Channel, Channel 14 is the channel that shows you where your plane is. The Weather Channel showed a HUGE line of crazy ass thunderstorms plowing towards Boston. Channel 14 showed our plane, plowing towards Boston. Who would get there first, I wondered, with visions of sitting on the runway in Erie, PA or something. So four hour delays, dancing in my head, I asked the fight attendant what she thought and she said "we're praying we make it before the storms." We did. About an hour after I landed, it all came crashing down.

• The '40s music station on XM Radio. Again, been doing a lot of reading lately on the 1940's - the Truman book first, now I'm deep into the Stephen Ambrose biography on Dwight Eisenhower, so '40s music has been permeating as of late. More on Eisenhower later.

• THANK you VH1 Classic, for being the best damn cable channel out there. Not only did I get to watch the videos for "Life In A Northern Town," "Stray Cat Strut" and AC/DC's "Jailbreak," but they actually ran an hour long episode "Game Show's Craziest Moments!" Now, I should stop here for a second and tell you how much I love this show. I'm so damn glad they still have the tapes from all the old game shows, because some of the answers people gave on these shows make me laugh so loud. It is so friggin' funny. The clips they showed from old Family Fued episodes alone are enough to leave my stomach hurting. Here's a sampling of some Family Fued questions:
  

Question: Name the first thing you take off when you get home from work?
Answer: Underwear!
(at that point, the creepy Richard Dawson said to the woman "next question, what time do you get home from work?")

Question: Name a game that married couples like to play?
Answer: Kickball!
(Dawson's retort: "I don't know any married 3-year olds!")

Question: Name a birthday men least look forward to?
Answer: Their wife!

You get the point. I was laughing out loud on the plane. Anyway, for entertainment value, JetBlue is a fine deal. Truthfully, though, the ONLY consideration for me when flying now is that little Expedia button that says "sort by duration of flight." Whoever gets me there the quickest gets the money. Lately the whole delay thing seems to be getting worse and worse and worse, so much so that a couple of weeks ago on my way back from NYC, I gave up and took Amtrak.

 

Go To Your Room!

Not sure I'd want to spend $13,000 on it, but a home office like this one looks really cool to me. I've got the yard for it, too. Check out the three screenshots for close-ups.

Excellent and funny write-up of a friend's visit to see Steely Dan and (gulp) Michael McDonald, he of Doobie Brothers fame. I have some appreciation for Steely Dan, although bunches of their music drive me nuts sometimes. I have no appreciation for Michael McDonald, which makes my friend's article all the better.

 

The Roads You Will Take

Writing today from the insanely cool Hotel San Jose in Austin, Texas. I don't know what happened yesterday - my post got cut off. Here's what I wrote:

This week marks five years for me at Ask.com. That's rather mind-blowing. It seemed like just yesterday when I was sitting in Chicago with a good friend, my professional life at a fork in the road. I had two job offers, one with Ask.com (Ask Jeeves at the time) and the other with a long-established, non-internet entity. I had already been at two failed dot.com's, so the idea of going to a third dot.com weighed heavy on my mind. But the money was (way) better and the job description seemed a little more interesting so, making the vow that "this would be the last dot.com job I ever take," I accepted the position and started on July 24, 2001. Time has really flown since then and the progress our company has made in the five years I've been around has been stunning.

I have given Ask.com a lot of myself and it has given back to me in spades on so many levels. Work is never without frustrations, but they are largely kept to a minimum and I've established friendships there that will undoubtedly last way longer than my tenure at Ask. The other night, out at dinner in NYC, I remarked to my boss how comforting it is to see that our small group of nine people (business development) is about the least political group of people I have ever worked with. That is difficult to find anywhere and much appreciated. My muse will undoubtedly take me somewhere else during this lifetime, but there's a lot to like here. It is my longest tenure at any job - by double.

 

Big Star is one of those bands solely designed for music-nerds (my hand is WAY up). Music-nerd bands are bands that don't sell any records, yet are cited by all the popular bands as a massive influence. Big Star has long been a favorite of mine, so it was with great trepidation when I heard that they were releasing an album last year after 30 years of relative studio inactivity. Only two original band members remain (Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens), but one should always be suspicious when a band reunites after that long to make an album under a name that is much-heralded in the music geek kingdom. Big Star were risking their untarnished name - for what, we did not know. The result? Not half bad. Literally. While not even close to their seminal output of the 1970s, there are brief touches of superiority on this album, particularly "Best Chance We Ever Had" and "Lady Sweet," for which I've embedded the video above, courtesy of YouTube.

This week marks five years for me at Ask.com. That's rather mind-blowing. It seemed like just yesterday when I was sitting in Chicago with a good friend, my professional life at a fork in the road. I had two job offers, one with Ask.com and the other with a long-established, non-internet entity. I had already been at two failed dot.com's, so the idea of going to a third dot.com weighed heavy on my mind. But the money was (way) better and the job description seemed a little more interesting so, making the vow that "this would be the last dot.com job I ever take," I accepted the position and started on July 24, 2001. Time has really flown since then and the progress our company has made in the five years I've been around has been stunning. I have given Ask.com a lot of myself and it has given back to me in spades on so many levels. Work is never without frustrations, but they are largely kept to a minimum and I've established friendships there that will undoubtedly last way longer than my tenure at Ask. The other night, out at dinner in NYC, I remarked to my boss how comforting it is to see that our group is about the least political group of people I have ever worked with. That is difficult to find anywhere and much appreciated. My muse will undoubtedly take me somewhere else during this lifetime, but there's a lot to like here. It is my longest tenure at any job - by double.

 

Money, Get Away

Our House, Maynard, MA
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

This is our house, located in Maynard, MA. When we first bought it nearly three years ago, it was in good shape structurally, but nearly everything else needed to be changed, replaced or updated. Oh, did we ever update. I won't bore you with the details, but the house has undergone a near 100% revamping and I think we are both particularly proud of what we've accomplished.

So this morning I read, with mild speculation, a story about the alarming rise in foreclosures in the housing market in Massachusetts. It seems each week, the Globe runs a story about the foreclosure problem and each time I see it, I sort of shrug my shoulders, because while it is alarming, positioning it as a "crisis" is rather misleading. The reason, pure and simple, is that the amount of home sales have skyrocketed since 2000. Sell more houses, you're going to have more foreclosures.

Finally, this morning Globe's actually revealed what I had been looking for: the actual rate of foreclosures to mortgages/homes purchased. Surprise! The rate in Massachusetts is actually below the national average. According to the article, lenders have filed for foreclosure on 0.6% of Massachusetts mortgages, below the 1% national rate. My point: always read the whole story, not just the headlines, because there's always more to it. Except in the Middle East - you can just read the headlines there, because it's all the same and has been since WWII.

Luckily, Steph and I haven't had to worry so much about foreclosures or making the monthly payment and I thank my lucky stars for it. I'm terribly conservative when it comes to money, so I just cannot see dropping the money some people are dropping on housing. It would be awesome to have a palace, but you know what? I'm not going to spend 75% of my income on it, like many are doing. I want (no, need) the option to put money away for retirement, emergencies, general savings or......improvements to the house. Hey, some people spend it, some save it. I save it.

This approach doesn't allow me to live in neighboring towns whose tax rates and land values are often double what Maynard's are. Who knows, maybe someday we'll change our minds. But ithis approach allowed me to pay cash for a kitchen renovation in January of 2005 and the only debt at this point in our lives is our mortgage. An upcoming bathroom renovation will also be paid in cash. That is comforting to me. I also know that situations like this (paying cash for renovations) are not the norm and our much appreciated luck can change at the drop of a hat. But I honestly feel that carrying no debt is the reward we get for staying the course and that it's not all luck, either, it's careful planning as well.

 

Love Thy Brother

I realized last night that I only wrote one post last week. An extraordinarily busy business trip to NYC was some of the cause, but as mentioned before, the idea-meter for posts is running low lately.

So yesterday marked the 2nd anniversary of my marriage and we celebrated by wandering around Newbury St. in Boston for a couple of hours and stopping for a drink and a small appetizer at the frou-frou Sonsie. Sonsie is apparantly one of the restuarants in town that all the "players" and celebrities go to and if the foccasia bread is any gauge of the food quality, I know why. Great stuff. However, I must question the tact of the waitress who called me "girly" for ordering a rum drink. She smiled when she said it, but I think she may have meant it. Screw the beautiful people.

The highlight of the night, though, was dinner at a restaurant called Sibling Rivalry, an interesting concept, straight from the whole Iron Chef modus operandi. The restaurant's chefs are two brothers, David and Bob Kinkead, and each of them offer a dish with one common ingredient. For example, black beans. David may offer scallops, pureed mashed potatoes, pork dumplings, all with a black bean sauce, while Bob's recipe is Pork Loin w/ sausage, black beans and collard greens. Get it?

It was fantastic and one of the better Boston area restaurants I've eaten in over the years. The food was an explosion of flavors (I did opt for the scallops) and it was one of those truly great restaurants where the portions are not so huge that you leave the place feeling like there's a cannonball in your stomach. Steph may argue that last point, as the steak they gave her (David's version) was quite large, but both of us left there feeling like you should after a quality meal - ready for Erikson's. Very very highly recommended, located down on Tremont St. in the South End near Hammersly's and all the other terrific restaurants down there.

In other news, speaking of explosions, my vegetable garden is off the hook right now! The tomatoes are popping up like crazy and I've already pulled five cucumbers and eaten one. The red peppers are taking a little longer than expected, but those are just starting to emerge as well. This year was supposed to be an experiment and it's been a successful one. Next year I plan on at least tripling its size and growing much more (minus so many cucumbers).

I keep listening more and more to the terrific album by The Whigs and as I mentioned before, I'm making the prediction that they'll be a standard name soon enough. Right now it's hard to find news articles, but I did find this one, a pretty decent article on the band. Word has it they've been signed to a label already, so we'll see what comes of that. I'm of the opinion that bands really don't need a label anymore these days, but that's another post for another time.

 

Never Trouble Trouble 'Till Trouble Troubles You

The subject line of today's post is pulled from someone's "quotation" in my dad's high school yearbook. How I remember this, I have no single idea, because I haven't seen that yearbook in many years now. I just remember it. Neat quote.

So, my brief respite from the blog (and from life) yesterday and today was spent up in New Hampshire on Golden Pond, or as it's really called, Squam Lake, the much quieter cousin of Lake Winnipesaukee. The lakes each provide sharp lifestyle contrasts - the significantly larger Winipesaukee is more like America as we know it today: everything is big. Big houses, big boats, big SUV's, big restaurants, big money. This also means more oppportunity for activities both fun and potentially over the top.

Squam, on the other hand, doesn't allow motorboats over a certain size and has some issues around land trusts which have prevented the sprawl that its big brother has seen over the last twenty years. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find many living quarters at all right on the lake. And when you do find lodgings at Squam they are, shall we say, rustic. Each night you're more or less guaranteed to wake up in the middle of the night and hear that familiar buzzing of a mosquito around your ear or a loon crying out in the pitch black. The structures (at least the ones I've stayed in) are cabins, pure and simple. Not houses. So, no television, no air conditioning, severely outdated electricity and old wooden doors & windows that never quite close correctly due to time and constant swing from cold to warm, year to year.

Each location has its significant plusses and minuses and these are not the topic of today's post. While scanning and inspecting the old Squam cabin on Monday, I came across an absolute jewel - stacks upon stacks of old Life magazines, in very decent condition, spanning the years 1939-1948. I suppose it was serendipitous that I found these, then, because I have just completed reading the magnificent 1,000 page Harry Truman biography. The magazines essentially cover the very era where Truman and his predecessor were such momentous figures. Obviously the early '40s issues of Life were laser focused on the war, with nearly every ad calling for us regular Americans to conserve whatever materials possible for our fighting boys around the globe. The latter half of the decade provided much lighter fare, my favorites being a 1948 cover story on someone's pet deer and the "College Clothes" issue from 1946.

It is clearly no secret to anyone who has read this blog that I am very much a fan of history and that one of the recurring themes of my writing over the years is the simple passage of time, a topic which always has and forever will amaze me. I don't know when it was that this harmless obsession came about, but once it did, it may have solved a lot of uneasiness I probably had in my life beforehand, for I've come to try and really appreciate every second I have here. Or, perhaps, the years just bring maturity. Probably both.

Regardless, at one point as I was lying there in an old, raggedy glider-couch on the weathered porch, I poked my head out of a 1940's Life Magazine and just took a minute to look over the incredibly calm, quiet lake and thought to myself that this is, in all likelihood, exactly what it looked like in the 1940s. In fact, someone probably sat here reading this thing when it was "the new issue of Life," and took a similar pause, then resumed reading, just like I did. Why I think this is incredible, I just couldn't tell you. With any luck, someone 65 years down the road will leaf through the same issue and appreciate it all (the magazine, the view, the era, time passing) as much as I do today.

 

YouTube Highlights - Blood, Sweat and Whigs

I thought I might be able to find Neil Young's "Helpless" from The Last Waltz on YouTube, but it doesn't appear to be there, so here's another video version of the song from a 1974 tour. The richness that The Band provided is clearly missing, but it's still a terrific version of the song.

Other YouTube highlights:

- Stan Jonathan bloodying up some dude from the Montreal Canadiens in a :36 second clip from a late '70s Bruins game at the Garden. This really brings me back. I totally miss Fred Cusick, the old Bruins play-by-play guy. The current play-by-play guy is Dale Arnold and he's just a complete dweeb. I feel like at any juncture of the game Arnold will turn into that "Rain Man" guy played by Dustin Hoffman a while back and start repeadtedly saying "I'm a very good driver" or something.

- Speaking of The Last Waltz, YouTube does have the second-best performance of the night, Van Morrison's leg kicking, contorting version of "Caravan," in which his voice has the authority of an atomic bomb and The Band feeds off his energy to provide a concert film highlight for the ages. Take a 4 minute break from work and turn up the volume. Seriously. Your day will be better because of it.

- Mark this name down: The Whigs. I typically don't make a habit of predicting really big things for bands because usually when I predict such things it almost never happens. Sidenote, though: I will and always will lay claim to predicting big things for Pearl Jam when I saw them with about 50 other people at Peabody's Down Under in Cleveland, OH before they really hit it big - I still have the ticket stub. Anyway, I just have a feeling about The Whigs. This young group hail from Athens, GA and have released "Give "Em All A Big Fat Lip," which may be one of the best debut albums I have heard in some years. As usual, what gets me is the distinct voice. If you'd be interested in a band that splits R.E.M. and The Replacements down the middle, you'll like these guys. A lot. YouTube actually has a video someone grabbed from a live show, but I almost hesitate to link to it because the recording isn't that great. You've just got to trust me, this album is a full-sounding, killer set of songs with great singing and lyrics that will play very well to the music snobs and the mainstreamers. I really don't think it can miss. You can get some much-better sounding samples at the website as well. Right now, they are my obsession.

 

The Ink Is Black, The Paint Is White

It would be very safe to say that I'm a Neil Young fan, although I wouldn't hesitate to add that there are spans in his career that are just, in my eyes, unlistenable. It's these weak spans, though, that actually make me like him more, if that makes any sense at all. Let me try to explain.

Neil Young answers to nobody except Neil Young. He has never sold a song to a corporation. He has, arguably, never let dollars get in the way of art. He has never let anyone - anyone - dictate his next move. Just ask Steven Stills. In 1976, Young and Stills recorded the relatively strong Long May You Run and a subsequent tour was all booked, the band ready to go. A couple of dates were played, then Young suddenly disappeared, the lone correspondance on the issue being a telegram he sent to Stills which said, "Funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil."

This story makes it rather obvious that Young has angered many over the years with antics like that, but it's that never-ending devotion to following his muse and his muse only that people seem to latch onto. The more he follows it, leaving whatever wake remains, the more people attach to him. Fascinating. His music speaks for itself, but his actions are, without a doubt, the exception to the norm. There aren't many like him. I respect immensely that a musician with his exposure has never bent to spur album sales. I mean, have you ever heard Trans? The key to my respect for Young is his lack of fear to do something different. It doesn't always work, but that's not the point. When it works, though, holy hell does it ever work. His performance of Helpless with The Band on The Last Waltz movie is stirring. Years later, he sat at a piano for the September 11th concert telethon and belted out John Lennon's "Imagine" with sincere emotion and severe chops. I can't think of another artist, really, who has had it both ways as much as Neil Young has and still emerged unscathed, all the while maintaining the level of respect that remains.

Where is all this leading? Tonight I sat down and finally watched some of the recently released movie Heart of Gold, which is a concert movie shot at Nashville's beautiful Ryman Auditorium just prior to the 2005 release of "Prarie Wind." That Young and his band sound terrific is of no real surprise. Any artist at that level will almost always have a fairly stunning group of musicians behind him and the Ryman is world renowned for its superb acoustics. A good combination indeed. What makes this movie so compelling (so far) is the spectacular, intimate way in which it is filmed and the circumstances surrounding the show itself. Young had recently had a brain aneurysm and it couldn't have been more obvious that this played heavily in his mind on this night and in the lyrics on Prarie Wind as well. Based on some of the very personal comments he was making during the show - comments that Young really never makes in those environments - the spectator finally gets a little welcomed insight into the muse. When Young mentions the recent loss of his father prior to performing the title track and follows it up with a charming story about him, you honestly feel that. At least I did. Young has never taken me there like that.

I guess it shows a man who is finally, at least in this phase, looking back on his life, his age and his mortality and finally putting it all out there. That we never really had this before makes it all the sweeter and that it's probably just another phase, so I'm appreciating it even more, because this particular phase appears to already be over, evidenced by the recent "Living With War" album. I can honestly say you don't need to be a huge Neil Young fan to really appreciate this film, because it almost plays like a movie with a plot, which is damn near impossible for a concert film, yet it still seems that way.

Final ironic note: I turned off the movie halfway through (Steph went to bed and she wanted to see the rest) and started flipping channels for a while, when I ran into a video of the 10th annual Ozzfest concert. The original Black Sabbath had just launched into "War Pigs" and there stood the inexplicably alive Ozzy Osborne, all 58 years of him, caked in mascara, his colored hair as long as ever and that crazed look in his eye - the look that was real in 1981, but is now just show business. Anyway, you've got to admire the guy - his energy is still there, but I must say, it's horribly misplaced. He does a lot of running, only it looks like he has an enormous dump in his pants the way he shuffles his feet, one foot very shortly in front of the other. I mean, he's 58.....Ozzy should really spend his energy doing something else. His attempts at firing up a crowd are now painfully cliche - look no further than him telling the crowd at least ten times how much he loved them and also repeatedly encouraging them to "go fucking crazy." Ah, well. Good to see he's still enjoying himself, I suppose. Neil Young said more to me in one three minute song tonight than Ozzy ever will.

Anyway, I knew I wouldn't be getting "Fairies Wear Boots" from the Sabbath (hey, I've always like the Ozzy-era Sabbath, just not a concert in 2005 where Tony Iommi looks like my grandmother with black hair), so I turned off the television and dove back into the Harry Truman biography. I'm now at page 897, arriving at the end of yet another fascinating life in our times, the story of another person whose detractors and supporters never got in the way of deep personal resolve.

I'm not goin' back
to Woodstock for a while,
Though I long to hear
that lonesome hippie smile.
I'm a million miles away
from that helicopter day
No, I don't believe
I'll be goin' back that way.

- Neil Young

 

Lost Between Tomorrow & Yesterday, Between Now & Then

cubs
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

As Red Sox fans, most of us feel an unshakable bond with Cubs fans. For many, many years, both clubs suffered through bad teams, bad personalities, bad public relations and bad luck. Both teams experienced championship droughts that didn't just span multiple years, it spanned multiple generations. We got the monkey off our back here in Boston in 2004, but those poor Cubs fans. For many years, the Cubs weren't expected to win - they were just one of those teams who, when looking at the April 1st roster, you just knew weren't going to challenge. The last few years, though, have got to be particularly trying. The Cubs should have advanced to the Series in '03. They should have made the playoffs in '04. They always "should have." The picture above is a screen grab of Derek Lee's day on Sunday, which is a microcosm of how 2006 is going for the Cubs. He singlehandedly left 10 men on base and struck out three times in six plate appearances and he's missed half the season due to injury. The team is 34-54 and here at the All-Star break, they're playing out the string. The time is now to blow the whole thing up and start over. Trade Prior and Wood to whomever will take them and build from the ground up. It's time. I see more upside today for the Marlins than I do for the Cubs and that makes me sad. I love the Cubs.

Hey, check this out! Seems some dude from Canada started out with a paperclip and used Craigslist to barter many times over and ended up with a house! It sounds insane, but yes, I'll say it again: he started with a paperclip and ended up with a house. How industrious! File that one under why the internet is awesome.

The other night after our hockey game, I had a brief conversation with a friend who was telling me that he's going to see the band Asia in a few weeks. After getting over my disbelief that Asia is still together and touring, I started thinking about how drastically things have changed in the music business. Asia had 2 or 3 real hits, but they will always be filed into the one-hit wonder bin. Back then, that was the exception to the norm. One-hit wonders were a novelty. Most hits on the radio came from established acts with staying power. Today, we've seen a complete reversal. I can't think of a single band that has launched their career in the last 5-10 years who has staying power. Now an established act is the exception to the norm. Why? Well, it's all neatly laid out for you here. Many factors have contributed to the role music is playing today, but author Chris Anderson (he of "long tail" fame) puts it all together wonderfully in this must-read piece. Read it, won't you?

 

The Reader(s) Sound Off

Last week I waxed about my lack of ideas for writing here lately. My idea generator is running low, but it will come back. Typical ebb-and-flow. Anyway, I had asked anyone reading the blog last week to post some recommended topics for a blog post. I got exactly one request and here it is, from Matt:

"I'd like to know of a band, or bands, that have come highly recommended to you or that a friend whose taste you trust has said is/are great that you just can't get into, or you think is even downright bad."

This is a pretty easy one for me, and many people often stare at me blankly when I tell them this, but I just can't get into Elvis Costello. I have many music-crazed friends who can't figure this one out. I'm a big fan of late-70s Brit music/pub rock - I love Nick Lowe, in fact. Lowe and Costello were true cronies back then, too, always working together on something. Yet, I still cannot find it in me to appreciate Costello's work. Knowing full well my tastes in music, an old boss of mine made me copies of ALL Costello's records, convinced that if I listened to the whole body of work, I'd convert. Didn't happen. Couldn't deal. One of my very best friends, whose taste nearly mirrors mine, worships Costello. Me? Can't deal. Don't know why.

Just the other day, in fact, that best friend I mention was sitting in a car with me at a local ice cream stand and Costello's "Veronica" had come on the radio - and he freaked out! He cranked up the volume and started singing for word-for-word, professing yet again his love for Costello and telling me what the song was about (Costello's grandmother, apparantly). I love when people do this, actually. It shows how powerful music can be in our lives. I do it at least daily, in fact. There's no better way to rid yourself of stress than picking a song you love and just losing yourself in it.

So there we sat, my friend in his glory. All I could think, though, was that "Veronica" is not only one of my least favorite songs by Costello, but it's one of my least favorite songs. Ever. I still love my friend, though. Just the way it is. I'm sure he's thought the same thing about songs that I've flicked up the volume on.

So there you go. Question addressed, another satisfied reader. By the way, my offer still stands - if you want to post some blog topics and have me write about them, just leave a comment. I'll do it.

 

Lying, Stealing, Hurting

Call me paranoid, suspicious, pessimistic, whatever, but the whole Kenneth Lay dying thing just seems.......wierd. Is it totally unreasonable for me to even consider that Lay, with all his vast wealth, cooked up an easy (undetectable?) exit for himself? That the thought of even one day in prison for such a rich, rich man was too much for him to handle? I don't know. Then again, I'm the guy who was convinced that we had Bin Laden captured in 2003 and the administration was going to wait to unveil it until right before the election, so who am I to say?

Anyway, I don't believe for a single, solitary second that Lay wasn't aware of what was going on at Enron. His actions and the actions of his cronies rippled through Houston and the U.S. economy like a heavy stone thrown in a small pond, doing damage to thousands of people just like you and me. Or: is it what it is? (Hi, Matt). A 64 year old man dying of the most common ailment known to males? Just.....math and science. I, for one, would have liked to have seen him do some time. Or, as I mentioned previously, have him completely stripped of his wealth and employed at WalMart making $5.15 per hour until he physically couldn't do it anymore. I'm with my friend over at The Fort when he says "rest in no peace." But that's just me.

It is a very rare occasion that I get to watch a Red Sox game in its entirety, but that was my goal tonight. Settling in with dinner (Trader Joe's lightly breaded Alaskan cod, a serving of corn, peas and some spinach, with a Red Hook ESB to wash it down), I proceeded to watch the Red Sox fall asleep against Tampa, the highlight of the game being Carl Crawford's steal of home. Now, if you click on that link and watch the video, you will clearly see that someone has slipped Sox pitcher Jason Johnson several valium. I honestly thought for a second while I was watching that Crawford would be able to order and eat a pizza, then cross home plate doing back handsprings before Johnson even released his pitch. Two things come out of this: Johnson should be released for his ignorace (and terrible showing thus far) and watching someone steal home base in a baseball game is a rare and extremely exciting event.

All that said, I turned the game off at that point and switched over to PBS-HD's "Victory in the Pacific," a documentary detailing the steely and barbaric resolve of the Japenese in the last months of WWII. Stunning. It could easily be said that the Allies, particularly the Americans, were equally barbaric, though, especially the fire bombing of Tokyo, which killed 100,000 civilians.

Between this documentary and the Truman book (page 738 now), it's surprising how little the U.S. thought about the horrors of an atom bomb - they seemed to have matter-of-factly looked at it as a means to an end and as a way to avoid further casualties, not to mention that they didn't think it would do the same damage it did to the 100,000 innocents they had previously incinerated in Tokyo. I really had thought that a lot more struggle and mind-wringing had gone into that decision.

They were a little off in their math, though: 140,000 ended up dead in Hiroshima and roughly 115,000 in Nagasaki. The book and the documentary do make you think, though, about how many more would have fallen had that war gone on. Tough subject.

 

The Day Is Done, But I'm Having Fun

I love love love it when a major holiday falls on a Tuesday, because it almost always means we'll have Monday off. While that is the case for me today, unfortunately it is not the case for my poor wife, who had to trudge in this morning as if it were a regular workday. I can't imagine she'll have much going on today in the office, but you never know, I guess.

So the first half of the weekend was spent up in Gilford, NH, visiting with my parents. My sister, her husband and my niece and nephew also joined in the festivities as well. We were unable to go out in my parents boat on Saturday since the wind was blowing a little too forcefully, so we ended up retreating to my parents house, where the weather was spectacular and the summer afternoon unfolded a lot like a summer afternoon did when I was a kid - nothing to accomplish and no responsibilities. My favorite kind of day, really.

When we're all together, it's pretty much a given that something memorable and/or hilarious will happen and Saturday certainly didn't disappoint. I will not get into detail about the particular incident, but it involved family members competing in several 30-yard dashes across the front yard. Now there's something you just don't see every day: your family participating in several 30-yard dashes on the front lawn. Think about that one for a second. I mean, it wasn't terribly competitive (other than the aforementioned "incident") and we were all laughing pretty good the whole time. Those moments, from where I sit, are way better than any paycheck will ever be.

In thinking about it on the drive home yesterday, I made mention to Steph about the good-natured footraces and tried to picture her family doing something like that. We both had a good laugh thinking about that one, because we just know it would never happen. Her family is just different than mine. We grew up ten miles apart at the most, but the differences between the two can be marked in continents. Visiting with both is always quite pleasant, but for vastly different reasons.

So what's my point? As usual, I probably don't have one. If I were to try to tie in a point, I suppose it would be that here on America's 230th birthday, we find ourselves living in a very diversified land, one where many families have many different nuances and personalities. One is not better than the other, nor preferential. It's just something to be appreciated. You adapt to the environment you're in and try to have the best time you can. Thankfully, both Steph and I have those people in our lives and we can do that on a regular basis. Neat.

230 years! That means I've been alive in America for 15.2% of it's short life. Not bad.