Here's ten songs I'm listening to today, In no particular order, with no particular connection. And sharing them for no particular reason, other than I felt like it. That's what's great about blogs, you don't have to have a reason.
1. Naked -- The BoDeans
2. Lord, I'm Discouraged -- The Hold Steady
3. No Roses, No More -- Lucero
4. I Got A Name -- Jim Croce
5. Baby, Now That I've Found You -- The Foundations
6. Love Has No Pride -- Bonnie Raitt
7. Surprise, Surprise -- Bruce Springsteen
8. Save The Last Dance for Me -- The Drifters
9. Great Expectations -- The Gaslight Anthem
10. Tangled Up Puppet - Terry Klausner
An explanation on the last one. That's a Harry Chapin song that's always made me think of my daughter, Maggie. She's hit the so-called "tween" years and has been on my mind a lot lately. I wasn't an 11 year old girl, so it's hard for me to know what she's feeling and thinking sometimes. I rely on her mother for that. But it doesn't make it any easier. The song is about a young woman coming of age and a father who feels like he missed it, trying to recapture the fleeting moments of her youth before it fades into the sunset.
I don't know why, but I've always felt like that's me with Maggie. Her life has been a blur to me. I still see her at 3 years old with pigtails, sucking her thumb with her faithful stuffed rabbit, Bun-Bun, perched on top of her head, hiding under a table when there were too many people around. Now she goes to Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers concerts and school dances. She's not a little girl anymore, and I often find myself wanting to yell out, "Wait! I'm not ready yet. Let her be little just a while longer."
Anyway, the song reminds me of her, particularly the line "I have watched you take shape, from a jumble of parts; And find the grace and form, of a fine work of art." That's my Maggie.
Listen up and enjoy. If you don't find something you like, I'll buy you gum.
Good things.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
No One Grows Up
“No one matures anymore. They stay jackasses all their lives.”
She’s Having A Baby
I came to a sweeping realization last night as I sat in the bleachers watching my son’s middle school basketball game. No one ever grows up really. The same clique-ish and sophomoric behavior that characterized us as high schoolers still manifests itself in us as adults. Or as Corey Flood so eloquently summarized in Say Anything, cautioning Lloyd Dobler to stay away from valedictorian Diane Court, “Brains stay with brains. The bomb could go off and their mutant genes would form the same cliques.”
Yeah, that’s true. I wish that it weren’t, but it is. I’ve noticed it recently in the parents of other kids on the team, who actually form their little sub-groups that one cannot penetrate. The parents of a group of boys on one of the traveling baseball teams have formed one and like to make a spectacle of themselves at ballgames and school functions. They’re the “popular kids” complete with inside jokes and stories carefully told loudly enough so that all within earshot know that they’re not part of the group. My wife seethes at them. I just think they’re funny and sad.
As you might guess, I was a bit of an outsider in high school. I didn’t particularly fit in with any one group. I wasn’t ostracized by any means, but I was never fully accepted into one particular clique or another. I was smart enough to be in classes with the so-called “brains,” but I didn’t eschew girls, sports, music, cars or uh, girls according to the stereotype. I was a pretty good athlete, but basically good enough to be the last guy cut from every team I went out for. So I wasn’t the complete jock. The stoner guys liked me because I helped them with their homework (Kevin Connelly would never have passed religion class if it weren’t for me) and I wouldn’t rat them out. But the strongest thing I’d touch was a warm beer huddled by the railroad tracks in Gale Moore Park, so they weren’t my crowd either. Even my own smaller circle of friends didn’t know how to take me sometimes.
But I was OK with all that. It kind of gave me the freedom to flit from one group to another, and see a little bit what they were all about. I was more accepting of some of their less attractive attributes because I also saw their better sides too. But I was filled with the hope that one day, we’d be beyond the petty group mentality. Yeah, I was wrong about that one.
And the sophomoric behavior? Well, let me tell you, especially those of you without kids, that the stereotypes you hear about parents at their kids’ sporting events is 100 percent true and accurate. They’re rude. They’re obnoxious. And most disturbing to a sports guy like me, they’re clueless, but loud. How can you feel comfortable shouting at a referee or coach, when you have no idea what you’re talking about?
Last night I’m sitting not too far from a grandfather who is screaming, SCREAMING at our coach about substitutions. This is MIDDLE school mind you. And this guy is going off on the coach, who’s really a 24 year old English teacher. But what really kills me, is John Wooden here doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. At one point he’s carrying on as to why one of our kids is standing still on offense. And I want to yell back at him, easy there Bobby Knight, that’s called a pick and it’s about as basic basketball as you can get. And the “clickers” are nodding in assent with him, in between offering applause and encouragement only for their kids. Because acknowledging the accomplishments of another kid might mean you’d actually have occasion to speak to someone outside your group. Expansion of horizons is not something easily accomplished in the suburbs.
So that’s what got me to here. No one really grows up. The same fears and experiences you had in childhood, shape you as an adult. Fear of whatever, be it loneliness or abandonment or just not fitting forms your color palette as an adult, just like it did when you were 9 or 12 or 15 years old. So you seek that pack mentality, that safety in numbers feeling that allows you to hide those insecurities in the context of a group. And maybe that’s not so bad, but it’s no less discouraging.
“Demented and sad…but social.” Jeez, even The Breakfast Club contained life’s truths? No wonder we don’t grow up.
She’s Having A Baby
I came to a sweeping realization last night as I sat in the bleachers watching my son’s middle school basketball game. No one ever grows up really. The same clique-ish and sophomoric behavior that characterized us as high schoolers still manifests itself in us as adults. Or as Corey Flood so eloquently summarized in Say Anything, cautioning Lloyd Dobler to stay away from valedictorian Diane Court, “Brains stay with brains. The bomb could go off and their mutant genes would form the same cliques.”
Yeah, that’s true. I wish that it weren’t, but it is. I’ve noticed it recently in the parents of other kids on the team, who actually form their little sub-groups that one cannot penetrate. The parents of a group of boys on one of the traveling baseball teams have formed one and like to make a spectacle of themselves at ballgames and school functions. They’re the “popular kids” complete with inside jokes and stories carefully told loudly enough so that all within earshot know that they’re not part of the group. My wife seethes at them. I just think they’re funny and sad.
As you might guess, I was a bit of an outsider in high school. I didn’t particularly fit in with any one group. I wasn’t ostracized by any means, but I was never fully accepted into one particular clique or another. I was smart enough to be in classes with the so-called “brains,” but I didn’t eschew girls, sports, music, cars or uh, girls according to the stereotype. I was a pretty good athlete, but basically good enough to be the last guy cut from every team I went out for. So I wasn’t the complete jock. The stoner guys liked me because I helped them with their homework (Kevin Connelly would never have passed religion class if it weren’t for me) and I wouldn’t rat them out. But the strongest thing I’d touch was a warm beer huddled by the railroad tracks in Gale Moore Park, so they weren’t my crowd either. Even my own smaller circle of friends didn’t know how to take me sometimes.
But I was OK with all that. It kind of gave me the freedom to flit from one group to another, and see a little bit what they were all about. I was more accepting of some of their less attractive attributes because I also saw their better sides too. But I was filled with the hope that one day, we’d be beyond the petty group mentality. Yeah, I was wrong about that one.
And the sophomoric behavior? Well, let me tell you, especially those of you without kids, that the stereotypes you hear about parents at their kids’ sporting events is 100 percent true and accurate. They’re rude. They’re obnoxious. And most disturbing to a sports guy like me, they’re clueless, but loud. How can you feel comfortable shouting at a referee or coach, when you have no idea what you’re talking about?
Last night I’m sitting not too far from a grandfather who is screaming, SCREAMING at our coach about substitutions. This is MIDDLE school mind you. And this guy is going off on the coach, who’s really a 24 year old English teacher. But what really kills me, is John Wooden here doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. At one point he’s carrying on as to why one of our kids is standing still on offense. And I want to yell back at him, easy there Bobby Knight, that’s called a pick and it’s about as basic basketball as you can get. And the “clickers” are nodding in assent with him, in between offering applause and encouragement only for their kids. Because acknowledging the accomplishments of another kid might mean you’d actually have occasion to speak to someone outside your group. Expansion of horizons is not something easily accomplished in the suburbs.
So that’s what got me to here. No one really grows up. The same fears and experiences you had in childhood, shape you as an adult. Fear of whatever, be it loneliness or abandonment or just not fitting forms your color palette as an adult, just like it did when you were 9 or 12 or 15 years old. So you seek that pack mentality, that safety in numbers feeling that allows you to hide those insecurities in the context of a group. And maybe that’s not so bad, but it’s no less discouraging.
“Demented and sad…but social.” Jeez, even The Breakfast Club contained life’s truths? No wonder we don’t grow up.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
A great night
Yesterday was indeed a remarkable day. I said to someone yesterday that I felt like it was “Hello America, today is the first day of the rest of your life.” We still have so many miles to go, and yes, we heard it over and over again, but I really felt truly proud to be an American again yesterday. And I feel like we have one of our own in the White House, someone who understands our problems and has a plan for how to deal with them. I haven’t felt that way about the inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in a long, long time.
And I was so proud of my kids who were so interested in it, interested in what he had to say and what it means. Although to a certain extent I think that maybe they still don’t COMPLETELY understand the significance of Obama being the first African American president. Maybe that’s a good thing. I had this discussion with my oldest son, Mike, last night. He said he gets it, but doesn’t know why Obama’s race should be a big deal. “You’re supposed to vote for the person you think is best, right Dad?” Yes Mike, but unfortunately, you still have a lot of people that don’t think of things that way. We got into a long discussion about Dr. King, Rosa Parks and the marches in Selma and other places. We talked about Brown vs. Board of Education and the whole misguided idea of “separate but equal.”Medgar Evers wife was on TV and he asked about that. We talked about the fact that poverty and oppression still exist in America, and the fact that they still do should be distasteful to us all. That it’s ALL of our problem, even if we don’t feel its effects directly. That we have great problems and we ALL need to step forward to help fix them. HE got that from Obama’s speech, I didn’t need to explain it to him.
I don’t think I’ve ever had that long of a discussion about race and civil rights and American history with him before. Obama’s election is doing that I’m sure in households across the country. That’s a great thing.
There was one more moment. He talked about his friends Aerrius, Aaron and Trey and how, while he understands that they’re black, he just doesn’t ever think about that. “They’re just my friends.” I said that’s what Dr. King meant when a he talked about a world where children are judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of him.
It was a great night. Sorry. It was a great reminder to me that, maybe in spite of myself, I’ve made a contribution to the world already. I raised a smart, compassionate and aware kid. And we’re going to need those kids in the future, a lot of them.
So, last night reaffirmed a lot of things, not the least of which was a little faith that I might have lost in myself over time. And I am leaving a legacy to the world. Maybe one of those 4 kids of mine will change the world in the future. Maybe they’ll fix it.
And Obama’s inauguration helped remind me of it. But that moment with my son was one I know I'll treasure the rest of my life.
And I was so proud of my kids who were so interested in it, interested in what he had to say and what it means. Although to a certain extent I think that maybe they still don’t COMPLETELY understand the significance of Obama being the first African American president. Maybe that’s a good thing. I had this discussion with my oldest son, Mike, last night. He said he gets it, but doesn’t know why Obama’s race should be a big deal. “You’re supposed to vote for the person you think is best, right Dad?” Yes Mike, but unfortunately, you still have a lot of people that don’t think of things that way. We got into a long discussion about Dr. King, Rosa Parks and the marches in Selma and other places. We talked about Brown vs. Board of Education and the whole misguided idea of “separate but equal.”Medgar Evers wife was on TV and he asked about that. We talked about the fact that poverty and oppression still exist in America, and the fact that they still do should be distasteful to us all. That it’s ALL of our problem, even if we don’t feel its effects directly. That we have great problems and we ALL need to step forward to help fix them. HE got that from Obama’s speech, I didn’t need to explain it to him.
I don’t think I’ve ever had that long of a discussion about race and civil rights and American history with him before. Obama’s election is doing that I’m sure in households across the country. That’s a great thing.
There was one more moment. He talked about his friends Aerrius, Aaron and Trey and how, while he understands that they’re black, he just doesn’t ever think about that. “They’re just my friends.” I said that’s what Dr. King meant when a he talked about a world where children are judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of him.
It was a great night. Sorry. It was a great reminder to me that, maybe in spite of myself, I’ve made a contribution to the world already. I raised a smart, compassionate and aware kid. And we’re going to need those kids in the future, a lot of them.
So, last night reaffirmed a lot of things, not the least of which was a little faith that I might have lost in myself over time. And I am leaving a legacy to the world. Maybe one of those 4 kids of mine will change the world in the future. Maybe they’ll fix it.
And Obama’s inauguration helped remind me of it. But that moment with my son was one I know I'll treasure the rest of my life.
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