Taking stock of yourself

I turned 39 today, which is I guess as close to officially being middle aged as one can get. Or at least most of my body is middle aged. My kidneys and liver are probably closer to retirement and my appendix is looking around nervously like Old Yeller and going “Nah, we don’t really need to go out back, do we?” Still, if there ever was a day to take an official reckoning of my life this is the day to do so. Here we go.

Height: Six foot one. Or so I still claim. The last couple of doctor’s visits have measured me more around six feet which means that either a) I even slouch at the doctor’s office, b) my poor posture has finally started causing back problems or c) the definition of an inch has been slightly changed from when I was twenty one. Outside of the concern of lower back problems (talk about entering middle age) the real reason this bothers me is if true I will no longer be able to say that Liz Phair wrote the following song about our failed relationship in the early 90s…


(Look, in the early 90’s we thought this sounded good. It was a weird decade.)

Weight: 185.4 pounds! That is a BMI of 24.4, which puts me in the normal weight range and slimmer than 63% of the population. This may not sound like much but back when Kim and I started dating I weighed more in the range of 215 pounds and was horribly out of shape. Now I have at least improved my diet to the point where I have been able to keep the weight off and have a personal trainer who has helped build up my strength (though I have faded a bit in that the past few months).

5K Time (treadmill at 0.5 incline): 39 minutes, 10 seconds. Yeah, that sucks. I’ve been trying to beat my age in a 5K and I can now almost do it but that is solely because I keep on getting older. One of my goals for the year is to really build up my speed and cardio and knock a couple of minutes off of this time. I don’t know if it is realistic for me to break 30 minutes given my history of leg injuries but I would love to get a lot closer to it.

Work: I now have a cubicle with a door on it. After 15 years of work, two years of grad school, and numerous times of staring up at the fluorescent lights while seeing grey walls around me I have finally advanced to the world of having my own door. And a massive whiteboard! Honestly, that might be the greatest thing that I have ever had. I can spend all day drawing up ideas, building lists and just jotting down ideas. Of course, they are making me move in a few weeks so it will probably go away and I will now be in a cubicle that sits above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley but such is life.

Personal: I think I have finally entered adulthood. Kim and I have been married for 17 months (take that Kim Kardashian) and while it hasn’t been the easiest thing in the world we work well together. The fact that I am always on the road makes things really challenging but we work through it. We just bought a new house, marking my first personal entry in the wonderful world of home ownership where I get to say things like “what does escrow mean” and “does the house really need gutters” and “instead of paint couldn’t we just put up a half dozen neon beer signs?” Again, the fact that I am with Kim makes me the luckiest man alive. There are times where I can barely deal with me and I’m me.

Writing: Yeah, this has been the biggest challenge. I just have not been able to get back into the swing of things writing wise but I want to give it one more try. I just miss sitting down and writing and talking about whatever is on my mind and having that outlet. It really is a time management issue. Marriage, work, travel, keeping up the house, exercise, keeping up the house, everything takes time. Sadly, I still waste a hell of a lot of time surfing the net and reading pro wrestling websites. I just have to prioritize and do what is important. So I will try to get back into the blogging game. Once more into the breach my friends, once more.

The Case for Ted and Victoria

Thanks to Google providing some advanced statistics I can now tell precisely which of my posts bring the most traffic (as well as the search terms that bring people to my blog. According to them I am apparently the go to website for any and all information on Strawberry Shortcake’s antagonists.) Anyway, it seems that people were really interested in my thoughts on Ted and Victoria on How I Met Your Mother so tonight I am going to break down just why the two of them should be together.


1) Chemistry: It is pretty amazing that in a show where the theoretical focus is on how Ted meets the mother of his children he seemingly dates women where there seems to be no connection between the two. I never understood the whole Stella storyline where other than the one minute date they never even felt like a couple. I wasn’t really upset when he was left at the altar because I didn’t think they should be together. The less said about the entire Zoey storyline the better and after that we pretty much go into random guest star category. Even the Slutty Pumpkin wasn’t a good choice. In the entire history of the show there are only two women who Ted has dated who any reasonable observer would say is a good fit and one of those is Robin, who isn’t a good match for a few paragraphs worth of reasons.

However, the chemistry between him and Victoria has always been amazing. I don’t think there ever was a scene with the two of them in it that wasn’t awesome. To the point that I wonder why Ashley Williams does not get more work on television because she certainly seems like a great actress. The fact that for years that whenever anyone would post a poll on who should be the mother she would always win, even when she hadn’t been on the show for years. That means an awful lot.

2) Destiny: In a sense, the entire show is about destiny and how certain things are meant to be and that the universe will just force events to happen. So much of the show has been about how things just happen and this would fit that perfectly. Now this isn’t destiny in the sense that there is only one person who is a match for someone, which even I don’t believe. It is more that there are certain people in this world that you just connect with and you can come together again and again and it just feels right no matter how much time has elapsed in between. It just makes sense for the two of them to be together.

3) Reference to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset: Ok, if you did not immediately think of the last moments of Before Sunset at the end of this episode that can only mean that you have never watched Before Sunset (which you should immediately do but only after watching Before Sunrise because if you haven’t seen one you probably haven’t seen the other.) I am a sucker for any relationship that can parallel Jesse and Celine.

4) Personal Bias: Given that I happened to marry someone who I had originally met years ago, someone who I felt was my perfect match then but was unable to connect with due to timing and geography and being at different points in our lives, I really would like to see Ted and Victoria work out. If you go back to my posts in 2004 and 2005 you can see me complaining that they were stealing stories of my life for episodes of the show. I still state that the “Red Dragon” shots were plagiarism of the highest level. But this means that I have a personal interest in Ted and Victoria making this work.

5) Victoria doesn’t have to be the mother: One of the main arguments against Victoria is one of plotting. She can’t be the mother because we had already met her and then the storylines would make no sense. My workaround of this, and I am not sure if there is anything in the How I Met Your Mother canon that would make this impossible, is that while Ted is talking about how he met their mother he may be talking about their biological mother and not the woman who is raising them. This would allow for a bit of wiggle room without causing the entire logic of the show fall apart. (For those wondering, the favorite as to who the Mother actually is right now is Barney’s half sister. Who we have never actually seen.) Also, they could always just say that we are constantly meeting the same person anew with the last time being when he knew she would be their mother. That would get around the issue completely.

Now I will have to address the whole taking Victoria away from the wedding issue. Yes, that is a douche move but we are talking about Ted here. The guy has been a douche for nearly a decade now. Yes, it is horrible to leave someone at the altar and Ted knows that first hand. But this isn’t a case of him showing up at the church and yelling “I object!” and then storming to the front and sweeping her up in his arms. As crappy as this is, sometimes in life you make a selfish decision because it works out best for you. If what is best for you turns out to be finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with maybe you can get away with being selfish. Maybe this is me showing my romantic side over my practical side. I just think Ted and Victoria belong together.

Let's go for a well documented walk

I have to say that I am extremely happy to see people commenting on the blog again. Thanks for reading and trust me, I appreciate everything that people say. This is still a bit of a work in progress as I try to get back into the groove of writing so things may not be at their best at all times but I will keep on working at it. Also, as you can tell from this week my current schedule just does not work very well with my old Sunday through Thursday posting routine so while I am still going to aim to post five nights a week I can’t guarantee just which nights those will be. Basically I write whenever I can sneak in the 20 or 30 minutes of time that this requires and until I either get a longer day or, preferably, a helper monkey things will have to be on an as it happens basis.


Speaking of trying to find time I decided to look at one aspect of my personal fitness that I had been ignoring. After reading A. J. Jacobs’ “Drop Dead Healthy”, in which he examines in detail a ton of fitness trends, I decided to look into this idea that you should walk 10,000 steps a day. After the debacle of buying three separate sound machines at least this time I found a free iPhone app before buying a pedometer at Target. After tracking my steps for a few days I’ve found out a few interesting facts.

On a daily basis I walk a little over 3,000 steps. Most of those are to and from my car in the parking lot and the only reason that I walk that many is that I tend to come to work later than most people so I end up with a parking space farther away from the door. Other than that my walking at work is confined to getting printouts and coffee (and I am requesting a helper monkey to take care of the latter.) One day at lunch I just decided to walk around for 20 minutes in which I walked a mile and took around 2,000 steps. All of this means is that there is no way in hell I could walk 10,000 steps in a day.

Think about it. That is a recommendation to walk five miles a day. Outside of specifically scheduling time on the treadmill there really is no practical way for me to achieve that amount of walking. It is not a question of ability. I’ve done four to five miles on a treadmill on a number of occasions. It is just that my current daily habits do not allow for anywhere near that much activity. I’m not sure I know of anyone, particularly anyone who works in an office job outside of a major city, that would naturally walk that much.

When I worked in downtown Chicago and took the train to work I wouldn’t be surprised if I walked that much. Certainly when I was in college and had to go back and forth to a number of buildings throughout the day that was the case. But now I find myself in a career path where getting up out of my chair is almost a rare occurrence. It really does say something about our current society where getting up and moving is considered rare. I’ve thought about walking to Subway or Starbucks when I work from home and I wonder what people would think about a guy walking a mile instead of driving.

Anyone have any advice on how to be more active in this regard? Outside of spending my lunch hour walking around the parking lot I’m not sure what to do. I mean, I did an hour workout in the morning so how much more activity should I do?

Wednesday Night Music Club: Not sure why but I’m kind of in the mood for Old Crow Medicine Show tonight. One of those bands that if you told me twenty years ago that this would be my favorite type of music I would have thought that you were insane. That said, twenty years ago I thought Sting was cool so what the hell do I know.

Ted and Victoria, together thank God

I admit that I only saw the second half of How I Met Your Mother and that we have been told on more than one occasion that Victoria is not the mother but if you didn’t feel a tug at your heart when Ted and Victoria drove off into the sunset then you have no soul. From the first season I’ve felt that Victoria was the absolute perfect match for Ted and given the fact that Ted always is referring to the Mother and not his wife I am hoping that they end up together with the kids being someone else’s. If not, as someone who did end up marrying the one who got away at least my televised doppleganger has been able to experience the same moment that I did.


Plus we always knew that Barney and Robin were going to end up together. Just a matter of time and a few magic tricks.

I will have to say though that since I am constantly on the road I have really fallen behind on my television habits. Guess that one can’t consider that to be a bad thing but it certainly is odd when you end up following shows by reading reviews online as opposed to actually reading them. I probably saw most of How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory though I know that I missed episodes here and there. I watched most of Awake which only meant that when NBC decided to cancel it that I could feel as though I had completely wasted my time. I’ve fallen out of most reality shows other than occasionally watching The Biggest Loser on the hope that one day it will be a show that actually inspires you to lose weight as opposed to deciding that every single contestant on the show is a horrible human being. (They walked off the show this year because it wasn’t fair. Yes, a show about weight loss is unfair. I have yet to figure that one out.) Luckily there are always episodes of Hoarders to catch up on and to inspire me to clean the garage.

Can't tell where you are without a scorecard

I know that I have mentioned it before but the degree to which my life has changed over the past few years is really amazing. When I started this blog my daily routine was wake up, realize that I am living in Kansas City, shake fist at sky, go to work, and either a) go home and surf the net, b) play trivia in a bar or c) watch an unheralded alternative country band with the same fifty people who saw a different unheralded alternative country act the week before. On weekends you could add sit on the corner barstool at Harry’s and drink Boulevard Wheat beer while simultaneously wondering why I was gaining weight. Compare this to my schedule the past few days.


Tuesday: Wake up, take the dogs out, spend some time with the wife and then drive from Fort Myers to Orlando. Attend a conference in which I spend four hours in a windowless conference room discussing minute details of economic modeling software and find it to be a great use of my time and never once think about how Universal Studios is just down the street. Afterwards feel slightly guilty about that fact. Then dinner, call home, write a blog post and fall asleep.

Wednesday: Wake up at four in the morning. Drive to the Orlando airport to catch a 6 AM flight to Chicago. Work on the plane. Head downtown and give a presentation. After lunch try to sort through my emails before heading back to the airport only to discover that my flight has been delayed by an hour and a half. Curse the fact that my resolution to use Weight Watchers and eat better means that I can’t get an Italian Beef sandwich for dinner. Fly back to Orlando, write a blog post on the plane, do some reading and try to relax. Then back to the hotel where people were blowing those vevuzulas from the last World Cup outside my window until midnight. Wearily shake fist at sky as a result.

Thursday: Wake up. Wobble over to the shower and get ready for attending a conference. Grab coffee and remember fondly the days that all I would drink is decaf while accepting the fact that to make it through the day I will essentially be shaking in my chair for most of the morning and then fight off a headache in the afternoon. Spend eight hours discussing minute details of economic modeling and still find that I would rather do that than head over and say hello to Mickey. Drive back home to Fort Myers to Kim and the dogs and not be able to think of a place in the world I would rather be.

I can’t say that it is always like this and the travel schedule can sometimes be a killer but I am in such a better place now it is amazing. I can’t explain how I got from here to there but it has been one hell of a trip.

Wednesday Night Music Club: Here is how tired I was yesterday. I forgot to post a music video. I am going with Kathleen Edwards tonight as she is one of those alternative country acts that I knew before she was referred to as Bon Iver’s girlfriend. Sunday night I will talk about Bon Iver and being an indie rock hipster.

Kids today don't know how it used to be

I was thinking recently about all of the things that I experienced as a teenager that no teenager today will ever experience. I started to keep a mental list. (Not a mentalist, though. It is probably illegal to keep one of those on the premises solely on the basis of helping me to remember where my mind was yesterday.) Here is what I have come up with so far.


• Watch television on a black and white set

• Change a channel without using a remote

• Change a channel using a pair of pliers because the knob had fallen off of the TV set and you were forced to improvise

• Listen to the audio of the Playboy network while hoping that the scrambled signal may momentarily give you a glimpse of what might potentially be a body part.

• Be able to record only one thing at a time

• Having to run out to Walgreens to buy a VHS tape

• Keeping a VHS tape ready at all times while watching MTV in an attempt to record your favorite videos

• Enjoy an hour flipping through the racks at a record store

• Hanging out at a record store at midnight on a Monday night in order to be one of the first people to buy a new release

• Making an actual mix tape

• Recording a song off the radio or TV by holding a cassette player up to the speaker and hitting record

• Write a letter and send it in the mail

• Be able to fully spell the word “you” in a sentence

• Diagnose computer problems by listening to modem noise

• Create a DOS boot disk

• Spend time on an internet newsgroup (though I believe that Usenet still exists in one form or another)

• Sit in the front seat of a car before being called a tween

• Walk to the store by yourself

• Walking through the aisles of a video store looking for something to catch your eye

• Experiencing the indescribable emotions associated with entering the “back room” of a video store

• Dial a rotary phone

• Use a pay phone

• Experience a time where it was not possible to be in constant contact with everyone you know

• Not having your life automatically documented and spread with the entire planet for all eternity whether you wish for it to happen or not. (High school must be horrible now. I mean, I see high school cliques on Facebook and I am twenty years removed from high school.)

• Watch Australian Rules Football on ESPN because that is the only sport available to watch across any media

• Spend a lazy morning watching five hours of game shows. I don’t even think you could do this now if you watched the Game Show Network.

• Grab a newspaper in the morning to read Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, Bloom County, Peanuts and a host of other incredible comic strips. That is an entire literary format that has essentially disappeared in my lifetime

• Attend a concert without trying to simultaneously record it or dealing with a dozen people around you who have decided to watch a concert through their phone



That is my starting list. I’ll keep on adding to this as the weeks go on.

How we remember

I heard an interesting theory a few weeks ago that I want to share here. In my own experience I find it to be true and if it is then we should probably rethink how we teach our kids. The idea is this: when you are in your early teens you have the largest amount of brain cells that you will ever have. It is not just your brain cells are dying when you are old or when you drink them to oblivion. They are already dying when you are in high school. As a result you have the most retention and most vivid understanding of what you are interested in those years. At every point after that learning and retaining new information grows more and more difficult.


I’ve certainly have found this to be the case with me, especially in what I would consider absolutely trivial subjects. I can probably discuss the world of professional wrestling in the late 80’s to a degree of detail that is staggering. I think I can even recall entire cards of Saturday Nights Main Event. I could probably recall entire brackets of the NCAA tournament from that time. I can tell you every detail in the Hitchhiker’s Guide stories and don’t even get me started on Monty Python sketches. All of this is still in my head today though if you asked me about details regarding the last book I read or the last movie I’ve seen I would probably struggle greatly.

This might also explain why no matter how old I seem to get I still get drawn back into high school mode. I know that since the rise of Facebook there has been this massive rise in relationships ending due to people hooking up with old high school flames that they find online. Maybe it is because those moments occur when our minds are at their most fertile that they take on a much greater importance than they really deserve. Those memories are vivid decades later so we interpret that as being an indication of their worth. We end up being bogged down by these memories that our brains hold on to until the end.

Where I really think this is important is in education, though. I was lucky enough to be a studious kid which while not the best for me socially had me studying a lot of varied subjects at a time where that data would stick in my mind. Studying math and science as a kid made becoming an engineer a much easier task. My interest in history and literature at the time gave me a foundation in those subjects that stays with me. Somehow we have to determine how to create an environment in which children are brought up to focus on the important subjects at a time when their minds seem to be everywhere else. That is a challenge.

From inside kid to gym rat

As I’ve been saying these past few nights, I am really coming to grips with the fact that I am growing older. There has been some positives that have come out of this. One is the fact that I am finally beginning to take care of myself for what is maybe the first time in my life. The results over the past year have been rather impressive.


I’ve been seeing a personal trainer for the past year. Well, actually several trainers as I had two of them quit on me within two months. That is rather discouraging especially given that it happened within my first few months of working out. It’s wonderful when the guy who is motivating you just looks at you and goes, “That’s it. I’m out of here.” But I did finally settle in with a trainer and have been working out with one for two to three days a week on average. This is pretty incredible given that I have barely ever lifted weights in my life. I’ve certainly been cautious about lifting after having spent enough time with an orthopedic surgeon to buy him a boat. I have to say though that I am seeing results.

Now admittedly these results are along the lines of approaching three digits on a bench press and being able to do multiple pushups without dying. But over the course of a year I have seen my strength increase and I swear that I have more muscle tone. What is most impressive to me is that certain exercises that I despised when I started working out have now become favorites. It is as if my muscles finally realized “Oh, this is how we are supposed to work in tandem.” Anytime I do a workout and think back to what my reaction would have been a year ago I am proud of myself. I still have a great distance to go but I have certainly improved.

I have made even bigger strides on the weight front. I maxed out weight wise at roughly 215, which doesn’t sound that bad given my height but it was all sitting in my belly and I looked bad. Between exercise, a focus on what I was actually eating, and admittedly using Weight Watchers I was able to get down to 180 pounds. I’ve slipped a bit over the past few months and gained a few pounds but I can say that I have been under 190 pounds for the first time since I’ve turned 30 at least. It also means that from a BMI standpoint I am no longer overweight. I never thought that I would be happy to have to donate clothes because they were too big. It has been a nice change of pace.
What I like most about this is that for the first time that I can ever remember I can actually start to think of myself in terms of being athletic. I was always one of those kids who was picked last for sports, which sucked given how much I loved sports and really wanted to be good at them but I just wasn’t. I’m still not a top athlete or anything and I never will be but the fact that I can go to the gym in the morning and push myself makes me feel that I have accomplished something. Especially given that my only opponent in this is myself. I’m not worrying about what anyone else in the gym is doing. I just want to make sure that I have pushed myself as hard as I can.

Wasting the next morning away

I was talking with Kim about this earlier today and we both came to the same conclusion; it is pretty amazing how in a few short years your body can change. Mainly with regards to how quickly you can recover from a late night out with little sleep. I will be the first to say that in the past five years my tolerance for lost sleep has changed completely.
When I lived in Kansas City much of my time was spent going to concerts or competing in bar trivia contests both of which resulted in some rather late nights. Yes, bar trivia contests can run late into the evening as once you start challenging people on their knowledge of state capitols you really can’t stop until one of you is lying on the ground unconscious. This meant that I would occasionally go to work with much less than eight hours of sleep (sometimes as little as four). Despite the fact that I was caffeine free for my time in Kansas City (I was Straight Edge in that sense) I still could be a productive citizen on that little sleep. Today though that has completely changed.
Now if I am up late watching television I can barely get going the next day. If I was up due to my mind running on whatever subject is in my head at the moment, which can range from work to rewriting pro wrestling pay per views so that my new wealthy villain Count De Monet becomes world champion, it is even worse. I’m not even getting into what happens on those occasions where I decide to relive my time as the guy at the end of the bar. I feel off for days after those nights. It is like my body can’t take it anymore.
That is one of those points of growing older that I did not really fully comprehend. I knew that it would happen one day but I thought that it would be when I was fifty or something. I’ve realized that I am basically closer to retirement than I am to high school at this point in time but in my mind I cannot bring myself to view life that way. I still feel like the high school kid in my head but my body no longer can keep up. Though I am working to repair that. More on that effort tomorrow.
Best of 120 Minutes: Speaking of high school let’s listen to some Social Distortion.

Small scale immortality foiled

One of the wonderful things about the current state of the internet is the knowledge that, no matter how much you wish it wasn’t true, anything that has happened to you in the past is recorded for the rest of eternity. Once you accept this fact you can remove yourself from the embarrassment of the situation and realize that for the rest of your life you will never escape your past. Or, thanks Rug for posting this picture to Facebook a year ago and thus keeping this memory alive forever.


So, when I was at Illinois I lived in Newman Hall, which is kind of like living in a dorm at Notre Dame except without the football tradition or networking. Lots of rules, some followed some less so, but a pretty controlled environment for college. In fact, the main reason people lived in Newman was that it was the closest dorm to the campus. Think about the type of person who chooses where they live in college based on the fact that it makes it easier to go to class. Let’s just say it wasn’t the party dorm.

(Side note: While I did drink in college I in no way had the common experience. In a weird way, now that I am aware of the Straight Edge movement I wonder if I would have been drawn to it. It at least would have been a scene where not drinking was part of the reason behind it, along with arrogance, random violence and punk rock. To be honest, I have no idea if there even was a Straight Edge scene on campus.)

Anyway, Newman Hall had the benefit of being one of the older halls on campus and as a result it actually had history. Hugh Hefner lived there, a fact that I always felt was worthy of a memorial plaque or at least some free subscriptions. The main lounge had trophies dating back seemingly forever. One even had Dick Butkus’ name on it which is about as close to legendary as you could get. There was where I hatched a plan for immortality.

I knew that if I could get my name on a trophy in the case then I would be remembered on campus forever. Or at least have my name hidden somewhere. So, with a bunch of my friends I proposed a 3 on 3 basketball tournament with the winning team being added to one of the trophies. Given that I didn’t have the skill to actually add to the team as a player my main role was to a) pay the entry fee and b) show up wearing all my annoying Duke basketball gear in an attempt to enrage the opponents against someone who they technically aren’t playing against. Yes, I owned a Christian Laettner replica Duke jersey. Even I thought I should get punched in the face over it.

In the end we won the tournament and repeated the next year and yes, we had our names engraved on the trophy. When I was on campus I decided to make my way back to the dorm to see if my plan had worked. Got in, walked into the lounge, was stunned to see a couple of students there (again, gorgeous Saturday in April so let’s all stay in and study) and looked for the trophy. It was gone. They were all gone. They had decided to empty the cases and put a bunch of pictures in them.

What the hell?

That is the problem with getting older. Even your well designed plans to be remembered twenty years later can be taken away while you weren’t looking. All you have left are photos of you forty pounds lighter and with much less gray hair floating around the internet. At some point you come to the realization that the world will move on, with or without you.

Back to the old Alma Mater

Nothing makes you feel older than returning to your old college campus. I found this out a few weeks ago when I returned to the University of Illinois for the first time in well over a decade. Well, that is not entirely true. I was there for a few hours a year and a half ago with Kim but it was during finals week in December. No one should ever have to experience Champaign in December as everything is simply a different tinge of gray with students walking around stressed and wishing they were anywhere else. Ok, so that is a general description of Champaign at any time of the year but it is even worse in December.


But this time, through a bunch of circumstances that I might get into at some point, I had a few hours by myself on campus on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in April. Which let me do everything that I wanted to do on campus including realize why I should not be on a campus any more.

Kim usually doesn’t believe my college stories. Mainly because when I returned to campus and had a choice to visit anywhere I wanted my first choice, without any hesitation, was Everitt Lab: the home of Electrical Engineering. Most people would choose the bookstore or their dorm or a bar but no, I literally ran to room 245 where I spent some of the most challenging years of my life. I was thrilled to see that they still had actual blackboards and desks without computer hookups just like I did back in the day when it was just you, a calculator, a notebook, half a dozen pencils and a hope that maybe today would be the day a meteor would slam into the building. I went and checked out which of my professors were still teaching, stopped by the old office that I weaseled my way into my senior year and even stopped by my old lab.

Now I have to start by explaining what my old lab consisted of. The Power Lab is located in the basement of Everitt Lab and consists of motors, engines, a lot of complicated monitors and big red buttons labeled “Emergency”, which if you press turns off the electricity to the entire room. We were next to the fabrication lab, where students would be bathed in yellow light while wearing clean suits and building integrated circuits. We looked at them like they were aliens and they wondered why occasionally they would hear explosions from our lab. For the record, only once did part of a circuit I constructed end up embedded in the ceiling tiles.

Obviously labs should be locked on a Saturday but I walked down anyway and was stunned to find the door open. I walked in and saw probably a dozen students working away at the lab stations. It was possibly the geekiest thing I had ever seen. It was a beautiful day out, a Saturday in April of Mom’s Day weekend and here were these students laboring over their projects. My reaction was not to tell them, “Go outside! There is more to life than circuit designs.” No, I was holding myself back from offering to help. That was me twenty years ago. No question about it.

I could accept that I was older than the students in the lab. They were kids, of course, but at least they were still working in the same lab and probably doing the same projects that I worked on. And it was still the same building with the same professors. It was when I walked the campus that it really hit me. Not only were there new buildings but things like a Chick-Fil-A in the student union, the disappearance of nearly all the bars that I used to go to and the loss of all of the record stores that existed in Campustown. I spent hours every week in those stores and they were all gone. That hurt.

But here was when it really hit me. I went back to my old dorm. I walked in behind a student and her parents, looking like I was maybe some uncle who had latched on at the last second. I wasn’t going in to see a dorm room or anything. I needed to find a trophy in the student lounge. A very particular trophy that twenty years ago was my plan for immortality on campus. A trophy whose story will have to wait for tomorrow.

Wednesday Night Music Club: Thought that I would feature one of the Champaign bands from that same time as they look now. Yeah, Poster Children has aged roughly as well as I have. Still, they were a band that deserved much more airplay than they received.

Let's Get Ready to (Re)Launch!

3 -2 -1 Contact!

(It’s the secret… It’s the moment…)
At some point one has to put things into perspective. I started this blog back in November 2004 when I was a mere lad of 31. Ashlee Simpson sold 3.5 million copies of her album “Autobiography” that year. “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Troy” were two of the top movies of the year. “Friends” ended and “Joey” began in 2004. Since that day I have made 1,516 blog posts and if you just assume 500 words a post that means that I have given the internet 758,000 words of wisdom. I started after Friendster but before MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Hell, I had a blog before Barney had a blog on How I Met Your Mother and Barney never even mentions his blog anymore.
Over this time I have lived in three states, worked for two companies and at one point found myself being paid to not show up in the office anymore. I have gone from being the guy at the end of the bar pining for a girl he had met a year earlier, to the guy who signed up for a dating service, to the guy at the end of the bar who was really upset at the amount of money he had spent on dating services, to, and I will never in all my years understand how this happened, being married to the woman I was pining for in the first place. All of this is to say that I am not the same person that I was when I started writing here. Heck, if you buy that legend that your cells regenerate every seven years than I am not even the same person molecularly speaking.

What this is about is why I haven’t been writing and how that is going to change. I really have let the blog fade away but it was mainly due to the fact that I couldn’t figure out just what to write about. When I started the idea really was to just have a place for me to vent and tell stories about going to bars and going to concerts and ripping on pop culture and talking about my misadventures trying to date in Kansas City. But things are so different for me now that I can’t write in that manner anymore. I now stay home with my wife and watch television and realize that I can see 40 in front of me and realizing that middle age is no longer just a theory but is now a mathematical fact.

But I really have been getting the urge to write again and I have decided that I really need to carve out the time on a daily basis to just sit down and put words to paper (or electrons to screen depending on how literal a metaphor one wants to use). The thoughts and posts have been buzzing around my head and since I have a little corner of the internet all to myself I decided to hang the shingle one more time and try my hand at internet punditry. Heck, I might even get a twitter account since that is what all of the cool kids seem to be doing today even though one of the biggest things that I have realized over the past year is that I am no longer a cool kid. If I ever was one in the first place.

So this is going to be a blog about the way my life is now. I am not sure where that will lead me other than there will be less posts at two in the morning discussing encounters with random strangers in bars. And probably more posts about jointly filing taxes. Essentially it is going to be about how a Gen X kid tries to rapidly turn himself into a middle aged adult without losing his essence or his mind in the process. Along the way I’ll still delve into the world of pop culture, where Snooki’s pregnancy can have more airtime than the Italian debt crisis and where Justin Bieber is still a thing, apparently. If you are interested stop in and stay awhile. Otherwise, just consider me one of the infinite number of silent voices online struggling to be heard. Oh, and if you came to this blog by means of the most popular web search on google for it, the answer to who is Strawberry Shortcake’s archenemy is the Purple Pieman. (Trust me, search “Strawberry Shortcake enemy” in Google and this blog is the second link. I am not sure if I should be proud of that or not.)

What we find funny then and now

I just had to share this music clip. Mavis Staples, Wilco and Nick Lowe rehearsing the old Band song “The Weight.” I’ve been on a bit of The Band kick as of late and this is just an amazing cover of the song. Mavis Staples just sings the hell out of the song. You can even see the guys in Wilco just take a step back in wonder when she starts to sing.

I’ve been thinking recently about just where my sense of humor comes from. Meaning just what was I exposed to as a child that determined what I felt was funny and, more importantly, influenced my writing style and my brand of humor. Ok, at least I think that at times I can be a funny writer intentionally. But what I wanted to think about is what drove it.

If you made me list the TV shows that I watched as a kid (say before I turned 10) that influenced me the most I would say The Muppet Show, The Monkees and Monty Python. Yes, even as a 10 year old I was aware of Monty Python. Add in the Douglas Adams “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series and Dave Barry columns and you have the main components of what would make up my brand of humor and I would have to say that I am not alone in that regard. Now here is the interesting bit, not only were all those shows meant for adults but they instilled in myself and a lot of other people in Gen X a very specific brand of comedy.

Think about those shows. All three of the TV shows completely ignored the fourth wall and were full of self-referential, meta-humor. The idea of a running plot was only vaguely considered important and in many instance it was just gag upon gag upon gag. Now is it surprising that Seth MacFarlane, who created Family Guy, is a month younger than I am? We have the same influences and create what we have always found to be funny. Even a show like How I Met Your Mother is written to my generation due to the reliance on running jokes and constant gags while something like Two and a Half Men with its more classic sitcom format is geared to the aging Baby Boomers who grew up with more straightforward sitcoms.

You can see the same thing with music. When I was young I was first introduced to music with new wave and punk and when I grew older that combined itself into grunge. Add in country music and you have the entire alternative country scene. We take the influences that we have as children and meld them to what we want to create as we age.

Sadly this means that as I continue to age and move out of the target market what I find funny will no longer make the air. Music today is being made by those who grew up in the latest era of the boy bands and bubble gum pop. Someone who thought that Friends was the epitome of comedy is working on a new sitcom. That is just the way the cycle of culture works. Thank god for DVD collections.

Quick random thoughts

Note to self: when I finally decide that the career that I am destined for is mad scientist and embark on creating bizarre new creatures the first one I should make is a Bewilderbeast. That and my horse / zebra hybrid that I will call a Horbra. Also, I should remember to make it clear that I am not mad, I just get these headaches sometimes.

In other news, I am extremely intrigued by the murder mystery that has taken place on the royal estates in England. Is it bad that I am hoping that this means that Queen Elizabeth has gone on a killing spree? Could you actually arrest the Queen? I always like how in the Jack the Ripper case many people assume that it is a royal who was doing the killing so maybe this is just a replay of that classic case. At least it would be an interesting variation on the story.

Also, do we all have to buy a baby shower present for Beyonce? I mean, if you make the birth of your child a big deal in the media does that make us all liable for a shower gift? And I wonder just how many gifts that celebrities receive from random people when they have a child. I bet that it is way more than you would imagine. Though why anyone would name a child Blue Ivy is beyond me. Just once I would like to see celebrities give their child a normal name. How about Gertrude? It’s a Shakespeare reference. Paltrow could have named her daughter that instead of Apple.

For the Love of Tebow...

Before I get to the odds and ends of my books read in 2011 I need to make a comment on the Broncos game today and the media firestorm that is Tim Tebow. First of all, that was one hell of a game especially given that I thought that it was going to be the worst game of the weekend. I was glued to the screen and was amazed by how well the Broncos played. The Steelers were lucky to fight their way back into the game but Tebow’s killstrike in overtime was incredible.

It is incredible from a cultural perspective to watch the way people view Tebow. The best explanation that I have read is that no matter what your point of view you can use Tebow to prove your point. Want to talk about the gritty underdog winning with unconventional ways? Or how about the Heisman Trophy winner succeeding at the next level? Need to work an angle regarding how Christianity leads to success? Tebow is a media darling because he makes writing stories really, really easy. As a result he has become simultaneously the biggest hero and villain in sports, neither of which is earned.

Now I will be honest here, I kind of like the guy. He was drafted in the same year as Jimmy Claussen and I made the following claim. I could guarantee you that Claussen would be between the 20th and the 40th best quarterback in the NFL while Tebow would either win a Super Bowl or be a complete bust and I stand behind that claim. Claussen is either a bad starter or a decent backup while Tebow is either great or horrible depending on the day. To be honest he has already exceeded expectations. No one is ever going to consider him a draft bust. He is unorthodox and not a classic quarterback but he does get things done. I think a lot of the dislike for his football play is simply the fact that it is not the way we expect it to be done. We all believe that the quarterback position has to be played in the way that Peyton Manning does it so anything different must be wrong.

The biggest reason that a lot of people hate Tebow, beyond the media saturation, is that he is actually a really nice guy and we can’t stand it. The guy doesn’t have any big flaws to him. He is religious but I would never call him preachy or at least no more so than any other player who takes a knee after scoring a touchdown. He doesn’t screw around and leads a clean life and because he is open about that people hate him. The strange thing is you don’t see Tebow rallying against what others are doing. Not even in the way that the Straight Edge punk movement can be annoying in an “I am better than you” way. Tebow just is and people can’t stand it. Our cultural has become so cynical and jaded that the sheer fact that someone can just be famous and be a good guy drives us insane. That is a pretty sad statement.

Ok, last few books…

My Year of Flops by Nathan Rabin: An analysis of horrible movies by a writer for the Onion’s AV Club. Yes, I read a book of reviews of movies that you would never want to see. I can’t explain it either other than anyone who feels that Joe vs. the Volcano is a bad movie is someone I can never be friends with. I am sorry but that is one of my favorite movies ever.

Richard III by William Shakespeare: Yes, I met my yearly quota of Shakespeare by reading the one about the hunchback and a horse and various children being murdered offstage. What was interesting was that this was the first time that I have read Shakespeare on my Kindle and thus didn’t have all of the annotations and definitions that you traditionally have in one of the print editions of Shakespeare. On one hand I was proud of the fact that my vocabulary has improved to the point that I could follow everything without those definitions but I know that I missed some of the more obscure references and puns. I think that I will end up going back to print for Shakespeare. It just doesn’t read properly on a screen.

The Night Bookmobile by Audrey Niffenberger: A graphic novel by the author of the Time Traveler’s Wife about finding a bookmobile with every book that you have ever read inside, which would be both awesome and kind of boring. On one hand it would be wonderful to look about and see everything that you have ever read but on the other hand you would also look around and go, “But do you have anything else?”

Best of 120 Minutes: Ok, so maybe a few of you are aware that the new season of Portlandia debuted on IFC this weekend. I note this only for the fact that I have connections to both of the stars of the show. I met Carrie Browenstein before a Sleater-Kinney show in Lawrence a few years back and ages and ages ago I hit on Fred Armisen’s ex-wife at a bar once. If you need to wonder if I was successful at hitting on the ex-wife of a Saturday Night Live actor you really, really don’t know me. Especially if you envision the 24 year old version of me doing it. Actually, I’d rather you didn’t envision that. Anyway, this is all just an excuse to post a Sleater-Kinney video.

2011 Reading List: It's Nonfiction so it has to be true

Ok, time to make my way over to the non-fiction side of the aisle for the second part of my review of everything that I read last year. I have a few pieces of odds and ends that I will write about over the weekend but I run a pretty even split between fiction and non-fiction. Used to be almost all fiction so it is a rather interesting change. Anyway, here we go…

“The Childless Revolution” by Madelyn Cain: A very interesting analysis of the fact that women are having less and less children and are often choosing careers and education over motherhood. This is going to be a growing theory in the future especially as you see the conflict between career success and family size leading to the world predicted in Idiocracy. The other interesting bit about this analysis is that it is entirely focused on women. No one ever questions if a guy chooses his career over fatherhood but for women there is a cultural stigma attached to it.

“Gunn’s Golden Rules” by Tim Gunn: If you need to have a life coach you could do a lot worse than choosing Tim Gunn. At a minimum you could guarantee that you will be dressed immaculately. Sadly I can’t get excited for the new season of Project Runway: All Stars because Tim and Heidi are not going to be a part of it, which makes me wonder if I want to watch the show at all. It just isn’t the same without Tim saying “Make it work” and saying hello to Swatch the dog.

“Bait and Switch” by Barbara Ehrenreich: Back when I took the separation package from Sprint I was given access to a career development service, essentially a place that would help me build a resume, work on my interview skills and help in searching for a new job. Outside of having someone to proofread my resume and give a little bit of a refresher on my interview technique I don’t know if I received any benefit from it. Talking about networking with people who are also unemployed is not precisely the easiest way to find a job. This book covers the same subject as Barbara spends a year in the world of the job searchers: attending networking events and sending out resumes on Monster and CareerBuilder in an attempt to see if it is at all possible to find a job using those tools. For those of you who have ever been pissed at the job search process this book will let you know that you are not alone.

“Scorecasting” by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim: This book was basically taking a look at sports from a Freakonomics perspective. I am sure that it interested me at the time but right now I am completely blanking on it. I read it before I got married so maybe I can use that as an excuse.

“Undisputed” by Chris Jericho and “The Road Warriors” by Joe Laurinaitis: I broke one of my internal rules this year. I typically limit myself to one biography by a pro wrestler in any given year but this time I had to read two from some of my favorites. Chris Jericho, who made his triumphant return on Monday night as the most loved person on the show and was then the most hated six minutes later, is probably my favorite wrestler around and one of the few guys who I respect in the business. This book is as much about his music career as anything else and isn’t as good as his first but it is interesting. The second book focuses on my favorite tag team of all time, The Road Warriors, and while not the best written book it definitely holds your interest. Plus, the story of Hawk wrestling on a scaffold with a broken leg is always a good one to read. Sadly, the number of people in both books who have died before the age of fifty is too much for me to comprehend.

“The War for Late Night” by Bill Carter: A study of the whole Jay Leno / Conan O’Brien controversy, which was the biggest story in the world for a few months and has since become a total afterthought. Leno is back hosting the Tonight Show and will be until the sun collapses into itself, Conan has a fringe audience on TBS and I still wish that I could stay up late enough to watch Craig Ferguson. If you are interested in the ins and outs of how the late night shows works and just how many political games take place in the background this is an incredible read.

“Unfamiliar Fishes” by Sarah Vowell: I am a big fan of Sarah Vowell’s writing and this book about how Hawaii became a state is at least a little bit of a return to form from her last book, which was about the Puritans and was one of the most boring things that I have read. This has a lot more of her trademark dry wit and is an interesting study as to just how did we end up deciding that a) the United States should possess a couple of random islands in the Pacific Ocean and b) that they should be considered just as much a part of the United States as say, Delaware. Ok, that is not a good example. I’m not sure anyone can think of a reason why Delaware should be considered a state other than it gives all the other states someone to look down upon. Delaware is the Barry Horrowitz of states.

“Spook” and “Bonk” by Mary Roach: One book is about ghosts and the other is about sex. Sadly, sex with ghosts does not come up at any time as a subject though it obviously should. I’ve now read everything that Mary Roach has written and she is a writer whose style I like. She takes a scientific look at subject but does it from a very personal perspective. It’s basically investigative journalism from someone who is just genuinely interested in a subject. You couldn’t use one of her books as the basis for a doctoral thesis but they make for wonderful reads on airplanes.

“Those Guys Have All the Fun” by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales: An oral history of ESPN. After reading this you might not have a positive image of any single person who was ever associated with the networks with the exception of Robin Roberts. I knew of a lot of the ESPN sex scandals ahead of time (the wonders of reading Deadspin everyday) but there was stuff in here that was just stunning. Apparently Bristol is the Sodom of Connecticut. The book does make it clear just how the network became an unbelievable success and also why it will never be as cool as it was in the early 90’s when I watched it for every moment. Essentially, once you are owned by Disney and are the mainstream source of news you can no longer be inventive and reckless. Sad but true.

“The To-Do List” by Mike Gayle: The story of one man who sits down late one night, starts writing a to do list for his life, ends up with over 500 items and then goes ahead and completes every single one of them. I am pretty sure that Kim slapped me when I told her what I was reading because she knew that I would immediately try to do the same thing since I love To Do lists. Especially given that the first item on every To Do list that I write is, and I’m not kidding here, “Write To Do List.”

“Moneyball” and “Boomerang” by Michael Lewis: Written by the lucky bastard who married Tabitha Soren you have the story of the Oakland A’s and Billy Beane, made into a movie about a team that never makes it to the World Series (which was already made and called Major League) and another on how various economies have collapsed in the credit crisis. Given that one of those failed economies was Iceland I was interested to see if I could at all understand how in the world a country like that could suddenly decide that it was a financial center. I still don’t think anyone understands. Apparently it involves fish and elves. Basically everything in Iceland involves fish and elves and smells slightly like rotten eggs.

“I’m a Stranger Here Myself” by Bill Bryson: More travelogues by Bill Bryson. For those who know my story I have spent most of the past year on planes, in airports and basically never spending more than four days in any one location. As a result my Kindle has become a steady companion and there are times when you just search for something to read that you know that you will enjoy but don’t want to put too much thought into it. Bill Bryson works really well for those moments.

“Popular Crime” by Bill James: I’ve never been a massive baseball stat guy, though I certainly have done more than my share of scorekeeping over the year, but I have always been impressed with how Bill James investigated the game and developed better methods to analyze player performance. Apparently as a sideline Bill has also been interested in true crime stories and this book is basically his examining of various cases over the centuries. It basically reads like a bar conversation with a friend who is brilliant, extremely dedicated and completely ignoring the fact that at many points he is either wrong or bringing up a point that is really irrelevant. Still, I go back to this book to read select chapters occasionally and it did bring up cases that even I was unaware of.

“I Want My MTV” by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum: An oral history of MTV, which is basically the same as the one about ESPN but replace Robin Roberts with Martha Quinn. Also, Adam Curry’s hair is essentially its own character in this book. Seriously, I think it gives an interview at some point. Oh, and no one liked Downtown Julie Brown. Absolutely no one.

2011 Reading List: Fiction for all

Since it is a start of a new year (and an effective restart of the blog) I thought that I would go with an easy topic for the next couple of days: an examination of the books that I read over the course of 2011. I finished 38 books last year, which is about average for me. Yes, I’ve kept track of every book that I have read since 1998. In many instances I can tell you how many days it took me to read the book. Don’t ask me why this is the case. Kim asks me all the time and I have yet to come up with a good answer.

Anyway, I will start with the fiction and do the non-fiction and odds and ends tomorrow.

“The Power and the Glory” by Graham Greene: This was my challenge reading for the year, which just shows that I have really lapsed in terms of what constitutes a challenge for me anymore. Not like the good old days where in January I would decide to read Faust in its entirety despite the fact that once you read the definition of the term “Faustian Bargain” you can pretty much ignore the entire book. Anyway, I have always meant to read more of Graham Greene’s work and this is just an amazing story about Central America and the struggle of a failed priest trying to do one last good act. Really, really fascinating read about a time that we are not too far removed from.

“An Object of Beauty” by Steve Martin: I’ll state up front that I am a huge fan of Steve Martin’s writings and one of the first books that I ever gave Kim was his novel “The Pleasure of my Company.” But while I enjoyed this book you can tell that this was more of a novel written by someone who is really intrigued with a certain subject, in this case the New York art world, than by someone with a story to tell. You will learn more about auction houses and galleries and the denizens of the world than you could ever wish to know. A nice book but not a required read.

“Perforated Heart” by Eric Bogosian: Eric Bogosian falls into the category of one of those writers that I have always admired but had never actually read. Mainly because I tend to see movies of his work (Talk Radio being the biggest example) and just always hear praise about him. So I gave this novel a try because it focused on the 70’s punk rock scene in New York, which I have a passing interest in for some reason. Mainly because everyone considers it to be incredibly important artistically and musically but it all happened before I was aware of art and music outside of Sesame Street so I don’t know of CBGB’s outside of the t-shirts that you can buy at Urban Outfitters. Not sure if this book helped me to get a sense of the time, either. 70’s punk remains to me the story of a really good party attended by someone else a few years ago. Maybe you just had to be there.

“The Well of Lost Plots” by Jasper Fforde: Some books are written for certain audiences. Jasper Fforde writes for literature geeks. I have seen no author who is so inventive and dedicated to making as many literary references as possible via his Thursday Next series, which involves a world where characters in books are surprisingly real. If you can find references to Austen and the Charge of the Light Brigade entertaining than pick up his books. It is like someone decided to specifically invent crack for English majors.

“Midnight Mile” by Dennis Lehane: As you can probably already tell my taste in fiction runs to the more obscure but here is a book that everyone would enjoy. Lehane is an outstanding writer of tense thrillers and this book is in the realm as his earlier work with “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island” (along with his belief that book titles should only contain two words.) His books are page turners that do not fall into the Dan Brown trap of seeming to be formed out of a rejected Scooby Doo script. Definite one to check out.

“The Wee Free Men” and “Snuff” by Terry Pratchett: If I would hazard a guess I would estimate that I own / have read almost thirty books by Terry Pratchett over the past fifteen years. He is my fantasy writer of choice as his Discworld novels are brilliant satires of society and the nature of fantasy itself. What saddens me though is that he is reaching the end of his career as he has early onset Alzheimer’s and is now forced to dictate his books. You have to admire someone who sees the end of the road ahead of him and still plows on as he knows that he still has stories to tell the world.

“A Game of Thrones” by George R. R. Martin: I must admit I had not been very aware of this series until the HBO series and as a book it would typically scare me off for the same reason that I avoid most fantasy novels. At a certain age you decide that you can’t read a thousand pages about dragons and ancient rivalries without going completely numb. But my god is this a good book. He keeps you reading and the use of numerous viewpoint characters keeps you constantly engaged in all of the different threads that run through the book. I am going to continue to make my way through the series though I certainly will take pauses between the books. With something so dense you need to take breaks.

“A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan: I am not sure if I can call this the best book that I read all year (though it would certainly be in the top three) but it without a doubt has the best chapter that I have read in a very long time. It is a single chapter written as PowerPoint slides. It is a chapter about autism and the idea of pauses within music and what that implies and the different ways in which information is communicated and it is just fascinating to read. At first you think that it is just a gimmick but after reading it I could think of no other way to present such a story in so compelling of a manner. I’d read this book for that chapter alone.

“How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” by Charles Yu: I read a lot of books because I hear good things about them online. Kim challenges me on why I use this method to choose books as I typically end up reading books that I am supposed to read rather than what I would actually like to read at any point in time. Sometimes my method works and I find a great book. Other times like this one I just don’t get it. It is the story of a time machine repairman with a cute dog who ends up somehow killing his future self and forming an infinite loop. Outside of the bits with the dog I still don’t know what it was about.

“Hunger Games”, “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins: Now these are books that I can understand! 24 teenagers put into an arena to battle to the death for the entertainment of the super wealthy. I have to say of all of the young adult novels that have gained mainstream attention in the post Harry Potter world these are easily the best. I highly recommend reading Hunger Games before the movie comes out because it really is a book that you will not be able to put down. You will find yourself rooting for Katniss and Peeta and wondering just how would you do in such a situation. The other two books aren’t quite as good though that is due mainly to the nature of the story. There would have to be a bit of a letdown after the first one. Huge recommendation on this one to be on board before the movie comes out and possibly ruins it for everyone.

“The Visible Man” by Chuck Klosterman: There is an old question that I have heard that you can use whenever you are at a lull in a conversation. You can have one superpower: flight or invisibility, which do you choose and you must answer immediately. It is a test of extroversion versus introversion and I have to admit that my first choice is invisibility and I then regret it. This is a novel about what it would be like to truly be invisible and then be able to watch peole as they truly are. It asks the question of who are we really: the person that we show the world or the person that we are when we are home alone. What is your true self? As with most of Chuck’s writing it is more of an examination of an idea than a good novel (you tend to find yourself searching for a plot at times) but man is it a good idea. The story will stick with you for a while.

“The Post-Mortal” by Drew Magary: For those who are unaware, Drew is one of the writers on Deadspin, a blog that I have been reading forever that was founded by a fellow Illini so I am a little biased on this one. The novel is built around a brilliant premise: What would happen if someone created a cure for aging. You take an injection and then you never age. Now you can still die by being shot or by smoking until you get lung cancer but you would never die of old age. You would just stay the same age as you were when you took the injection. Would you take it? What if everyone else did and you ended up being the only old person on the planet? What would the world be like if everyone was a twentysomething with no maturity in sight? Have to admit this book was a lot better than I initially expected.

“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes: I wrote about this book a few weeks ago so I’ll be brief. Plus it won the Booker Prize so it really doesn’t need my endorsement. It is about memory and how we view things as we age and that amazing way you think when you are in your late teens and find yourself fascinated with intellectual pursuits. Ok, maybe not everyone gets that but there is part of me that wonders how I would have done if I had been in a school like one of the Ivies or Oxford or Cambridge and got to live one of those experiences that I have only read about. I probably would be an even bigger arrogant prick than I already am. Guess I should be happy that I went to a school that features a cornfield as one of its campus landmarks.

“Plan B” by Johnathan Tropper: I was surprised that I hadn’t read this book already. Tropper is pretty much an American version of Nick Hornby with a focus on stories revolving around New York. This was his first novel and it shows flashes of brilliance. A story of turning thirty and what that entails. Ah, the good old days…

Wednesday Night Music Club: Some days I would love to be able to stand on a stage with just a guitar, move away from the microphone and sing to an entirely silent crowd. Pretty amazing to see Josh Ritter pull it off with one of my favorite songs ever. “My wings are made of hay and cornhusks”

Life in bits and bytes

I could point out a thousand reasons as to why I have suddenly started to feel old. Just the simple fact that I started this blog when I was 31 and I am now 38 is reason enough. Hell, blogging has gone from a fringe activity to the mainstream to now a relic of the ancient past over the seven years that I have been doing this. Technically I am supposed to just be tweeting this and posting tidbits on my wall or whatever it is that kids do today. But today I feel old and proud of it because we are celebrating the 30th birthday of the greatest machine ever developed: the Commodore 64.



This is the first computer that I ever had. I still have it, stored at my parent’s house and I am extremely confident that if I could figure out a way to hook it to a modern television set that I could get it to work. I can barely get a laptop to survive a year or two but the Commodore put in a good decade of service to myself and my brothers and taught me ninety percent of what I would end up knowing about computers. I learned how to program on a Commodore, I figured out how to do word processing and spreadsheets on the machine, and I figured out how to determine the best football team ever using Super Bowl Sunday (in which I took the 20 teams provided, created two 10 team leagues with each team playing ten games (9 in conference and 1 out of conference) culminating in an 8 team playoff, simulated every game, printed out the statistics for each game and computed season statistics for all 20 teams. I still remember the 1984 San Francisco 49ers losing to the 1981 Bengals in a playoff game with Dwight Clark being tackled on the one as time expired. Somewhere in my parent’s basement I still have stored all of the printouts. Yeah, I was an indoor child.)

What is incredible is that all of this was done on a machine that could only actively store 64 kB of data. Put it this way, the size of all of the text I have written for the blog this year is more than that. There is basically nothing that you can do with 64K of data yet the machine and a disk drive that was roughly the size of a beige Playstation with a fan that made it sound like an airplane engine I played more inventive games on this than I have on any other system since. And I truly would program my own games. I used to pick up computer magazines that had programs in the back that you could type up and enter into the system and play. That is how I learned the basics of programming by typing in code found in the back of magazines.

It is rather amazing to think that I have been around for nearly all of the personal computer revolution. I missed out on the whole homebrew era of the 70s what with my being an infant and all but for the last 30 years I have had iterations of every machine imaginable. I moved on from the Commodore to a Packard Bell in the days when they were referred to as IBM clones. I learned how to create boot disks because it was nearly impossible to run anything from Windows. I remember scoffing at the launch of Windows 95 because I couldn’t imagine having to run something outside of a DOS environment. I was on the web using Mosaic and at once point has both a CompuServe and an AOL account. I still use AOL email, which is rather depressing once you think about it. I’m at over 16 years on that email address. I am not as savvy as I used to be and I have kind of given up on my programming days but I really have seen computers grow in ways I never expected.

If I am feeling extremely grumpy I can talk about how kids today don’t understand how good they have it. That they will never understand what the world was like before everything was online and we were constantly connected. Except that I feel more sorry for them than anything else. Not only did they not get to enjoy the journey but they missed out on a simpler time. I know part of this is that time speeds up as you age but I really feel that time is much more scarce now than it was in the past. There is no such thing as free time. I’ve received six emails while writing this and a dozen posts have gone up to Facebook. I can contact anyone I need to instantly without worry that I would tie up a phone line or need to wait several days for them to get a letter. But that speed means you are always instantly accountable. There is no way to just sit back and relax.

I miss the days of just sitting at my Commodore 64 and enjoying the moment. Playing a game and not caring about anything else. Living a life where you are not constantly on call in a world where it is as though everyone is carrying a pager and must respond 24/7. There is something to be said for nostalgia. It reminds us to slow down.

Today's Special (not the Nickelodeon show)

Because there is only so many times that one can watch a Big Ten team lose in a given day Kim and I spent much of this afternoon watching old episodes of Kitchen Nightmares. Now, I was originally a huge fan of the UK version of the show where Gordon Ramsay seemed to actually care about the restaurants that he visited and gave more advice than profanity. When I watched the first few episodes of the US version it was so horribly edited by Fox that I could barely consider it a reality show. But apparently we caught a patch of later episodes today that also featured restaurants in South Bend and LaGrange meaning that these were places that I could conceivably eat.

Given that we are in the internet age we immediately googled the restaurants. Four episodes, four restaurants, all now out of business. If this tells you anything it is that you should never, ever open a restaurant.

Now you could probably make the argument that given these restaurants were on Kitchen Nightmares, which implies that they were already really, really crappy restaurants that this isn’t a really representative sample. But having a top chef, a television crew and a hour long commercial that you can promote is the best chance that any restaurant can have of bringing people in the door. From what I can gather most of the restaurants failed from a combination of location and the economy. Given how much of a pounding the Midwest has taken over the past few years I could see struggling restaurants failing by dozen.

What amazes me though is that so many of these stories are exactly the same. You have a lovely couple or friends who decide that it is their lifelong dream to open a restaurant. So they take everything they have, sell the house, empty their IRAs and finance a business that is almost certainly going to fail. All I’ve ever heard about the restaurant business is that it is a wonderful way to go broke and I have a lot of friends who have been successful at it. I’ve known people who have run restaurants for generations but even they would recommend against it. Going into it because you like food is effectively like setting your money on fire except without the warmth.

Though I have to say watching this does make me hungry. And trust me, when I open up my bar I won’t have any of these issues.

Bowl Preview: Part Three

It is New Year’s Day and that can only mean one thing: that there is absolutely no college football on television today. I can’t believe that is the case. I know that it is Sunday and that the NFL is playing but the fact that they can’t put a single bowl game on today is ludicrous. You are telling me that one of the lesser bowls featuring two teams at or below .500 (say Illinois vs. UCLA) couldn’t play today? So that maybe I could watch Illinois win a game in 2012 instead of 2011? Is that too much to ask.

Anyway, here is the conclusion of the bowl preview for the rest of the year and yes, one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to return to a five day a week blogging schedule.

January 2nd
TicketCity Bowl: Houston vs. Penn State (Noon, ESPNU): Oh, where to start. Let’s put the Penn State season in perspective by this one fact: this is the only bowl game that is not on a network that is included in the average cable package. In fact, odds are 95% of the population could not tell you whether they receive this channel or not. The game is also being played in the Cotton Bowl but is not the Cotton Bowl because that game is played in the new Cowboys Stadium, which seems to be a violation of the space – time continuum or something.

I must state up front that I am a Penn State alumni via marriage. I am not sure if school allegiance is officially transferred via marriage (hoisting Illini fandom on Kim would just seem to be cruel and unusual punishment) but I have a much greater connection to the school than I used to and as a result the news of the past few months has been of huge interest. Here are a few of my thoughts on the entire case: 1) Jerry Sandusky has the worst lawyer on the face of the planet, 2) when you are on national television trying to proclaim your innocence and are asked “Are you sexually attracted to young boys?” there are two proper answers “No” or “Hell no”, a fifteen second pause is not the right answer, 3) Penn State president Graham Spanier should be ashamed of himself for not just ignoring the reports to him but in not giving a single press conference over the course of the scandal, 4) flipping over a news van in State College does not constitute a riot given that the same thing happens when they beat Minnesota in football, 5) the Board of Directors at Second Mile should be grilled more than anyone because they had all the reports of abuse but still stayed associated with Sandusky and 6) I honestly feel that Paterno was made out to be more of a fall guy than was necessary. Reading the Grand Jury report, which is disturbing beyond belief, it is still not clear what he knew and what actions he should have taken beyond what he immediately did. Yes, you could question whether he should have pushed for more follow up but I really dislike the fact that some people seem to view his actions as worse than Sandusky’s. Paterno is not the villain in this story.

Here is the last thing and the point that relates to this game: the players on the team had absolutely nothing to do with this. There were calls to kill the football program, cancel the season or forfeit their bowl berth all of which would punish the people who had no connection with the scandal at all. I am really impressed with how the players have handled the situation given that they are 20 year olds who have just had their entire world change without any say in the matter. So if you can find the game on channel 347 of your cable system feel free to cheer for Penn State for the athletes who are continuing to compete despite being faced with a challenge that should never have happened.

Outback Bowl: Michigan State vs. Georgia (1 PM, ABC): Is there anyone else surprised by the rather long ranging success of the Outback Steakhouse franchise? I mean, reasonably priced steakhouses seem to come and go as we have long since surpassed the days of Ponderosa and the Sizzler. And you have the whole Australian gimmick that tends to gain the nation’s attention once a decade and then fades away. Yet you still have these restaurants all over the place and when faced with a decision on where to have dinner when you are out of town it is a pretty good option. Have to say that I am rather impressed.

This is one of the classic Big Ten vs. SEC showdowns in which we get to see just how incredibly slow people are in the Midwest. It is just uncanny. It is like we bring a higher degree of gravity with us wherever we travel, which given the average size of a Big Ten fan may possibly be true. I think Wisconsin fans have their own gravitational field. You have to go with Georgia in this game for three reasons: 1) their football stadium is famous for having hedges thus being the only football team that is tremendously proud of their shrubbery, 2) they have a cute dog as a mascot and 3) even Notre Dame beat Michigan State this year.

Capital One Bowl: Nebraska vs. South Carolina (1 PM, ESPN): Now this is the most famous Big Ten vs. SEC matchup and I must admit that when I first saw the two teams playing I wondered why they weren’t including teams from either conference this year. Then I remembered that Nebraska was now in the Big Ten and that South Carolina has been in the SEC for years but always seems to be forgotten. I still can’t quite get my head around Nebraska being in the Big Ten. The Big Ten having 12 teams is fine, that the conferences are called Leaders and Legends is incomprehensible but acceptable at the same time, but exactly why I now have to consider Nebraska a rival is extremely confusing. I have nothing against corn though in terms of political correctness I guess we should refer to them as the Maizehuskers now, which would at least allow a rivalry with Michigan to arise. I also fully anticipate Steve Spurrier to utilize the Capital One Vikings in his offensive gameplan at one point in the game. I am still not clear how connecting your company with raping and pillaging is a good thing but given the way most people view the banking industry at the moment that is probably considered good PR.

Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl: Ohio State vs. Florida (1 PM, ESPN2): We have a new winner for the best bowl game sponsor ever! Yes, the only thing that can match the legendary Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl is the mother f-ing Slayer Bowl. No marching bands, just Slayer. Screw playing Charge after first downs: I want to hear Raining Blood!



(I am not kidding here. I would pay so much money to go to a college football game where all of the music of the game consisted of just Slayer playing in one end zone. Player injured? Time to hear “Perversions of Pain.” I am telling you if there is one thing that amateur athletics needs now more than ever it is thrash metal.)

This would be a title game in most years except now it is just a game being played in Jacksonville between a team that you thought wasn’t allowed to be in a bowl game due to sanctions against a team that just was not very good. This is the game you flip to and watch for a while because you really think that it should turn out to be a great game but then you realize that you are watching two pretty mediocre teams with the biggest story being that Urban Meyer will be Ohio State’s coach next year. So watch for a few minutes to hear the announcers talk about that and then just search online for old episodes of Headbanger’s Ball.

Rose Bowl Game Presented by Vizio: Wisconsin vs. Oregon (5 PM, ESPN): This is a really good matchup of sponsor and team as you would need a brand new, top of the line, Vizio television to fully grasp the grandeur of the Oregon uniform. I believe that they are now incorporating colors that are outside the human visual spectrum. It is the granddaddy of them all and should be a pretty good game. Both of these teams could arguably beat anyone on their best day and one year when we get an eight team playoff they will get their chance. Until then this is probably the best matchup of the day and it is always fun to watch the Rose Bowl. Or, as a kid growing up in the Midwest always understood it, “That game that we watch for the first quarter and then turn off in disgust as our school is down by 21 points already.”

Tostitos Fiesta Bowl: Stanford vs. Oklahoma State (8:30 PM, ESPN): I am sorry but I still don’t see what the big deal is about Andrew Luck. People are acting like he is going to be the greatest quarterback of all time but I just don’t see it. I can see him being a fine NFL quarterback and he has all of the tools but there is nothing about his game that screams all-time best to me. Plus, he went to Stanford and you just have to hate the guy on general principle for that. Stanford is a school where most of the student body is participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement even though the only reason that they are at Stanford is because they are part of the 1%. That said, Oklahoma State could very well rename itself T. Boone Pickens University next year and no one would bat an eyelash. I will be rooting for Oklahoma State here because it is always good to have one of these schools that are more outside the mainstream be at the top at the end of the year. Again, anything to give me a goddamn playoff system in college football.

January 3rd
Allstate Sugar Bowl: Michigan vs. Virginia Tech (8:30 P.M. ESPN): Come for the game but stay for the Mayhem commercials. Seriously, that is one of the best ad campaigns of recent memory. I am amazed at how competitive advertising is for insurance. You have Mayhem, the Geico lizards and cavemen and whatever the hell Flo is for Progressive. It is the modern day equivalent of the cola wars except without celebrities and the inability to do blind taste tests. As for the game itself, Virginia Tech has already had one player suspended for missing curfew and the game is still a few days away. It is kind of unfair to have a curfew in New Orleans given that time doesn’t technically exist in the city. It is more of a “I’ll meet you sometime this evening, whenever we both end up in the same location, or maybe not. It all depends on how the wandering goes.” Michigan is a fun team to watch but they have played so above expectations that they have to come down to Earth at some point. I guess I am just not a big supporter of Big Ten teams in bowl games this year which is usually how you are instructed to bet in Vegas. Still, this should be a rather fun game.

January 4th
Discover Orange Bowl: West Virginia vs. Clemson (8:30 PM, ESPN): I’m not sure we really need to discover the color orange. In fact, Clemson will be wearing orange so it really should not come as a surprise to much of the viewing audience just what the entire concept of orange details. I have to admit that I have been a Clemson fan for a long time for no reason other than they were really good when I was seven years old and they seemed to have cool uniforms. Also, college football always seems to be a lot more fun when a school like Clemson is at the top. Any time there is a team in title contention who a vast majority of the country could not tell you what state they are in just makes for a fun season. West Virginia is this year’s representative of the Big East, which was founded as a basketball conference, became a football conference to the point where they gained entry into the BCS, and will soon consist of every school in the country that can declare itself east of a geographic landmark. Except for West Virginia of course, which should be in the Big West by definition.

January 6th
AT&T Cotton Bowl: Kansas State vs. Arkansas (8 P.M., Fox): I have no idea how Kansas State ended up with a good team this year. Five years in Kansas City has made me more aware of Kansas State than I ever wanted to be in my entire life. That was five years listening to people talking about Manhattan and not referring to either the Woody Allen movie or New York City. I thought I could free myself of the team in silver and purple with the Thundercats logo on their helmet but here they are challenging another school with Kansas in their name. It is inescapable. Everything in life ties back to this rather flat state. Again, I am boycotting the Cotton Bowl until they start playing it in the Cotton Bowl again. We must follow truth in advertising laws in at least some areas in life.

January 7th
BBVA Compass Bowl: SMU vs. Pittsburgh (1 PM, ESPN): Last year when I wrote my bowl preview I made two major points about this game. 1) That I had no idea what BBVA was and they were so lazy in marketing that I wasn’t going to bother to google them and 2) that their CEO had an intense, almost sexual, attraction to compasses and navigational devices of all kinds. You would not want to see him in the same room with an astrolabe. This resulted in my receiving actual hate mail in the comments from a BBVA employee who told me that they were one of the largest banks in Spain. A year later and I still couldn’t tell you how that could in any way be considered a good thing.

Look, this is the point in the bowl season where absolutely no one cares any more. I couldn’t tell you much about SMU or Pitt other than they both probably finished with winning records and that A) SMU used to be really cool back in the days of Eric Dickerson and Craig James when they were openly paying their players and B) Pitt hired Dave Waanstadt to be their head coach at one point in time, which had roughly the same effect on the program as when SMU was given the death penalty. You don’t have to watch this game. Read a book or something.

January 8th
GoDaddy.com Bowl: Arkansas State vs. Northern Illinois (9 P.M., ESPN): One of the saddest events in sports last year was the death of Indy Car driver Dan Wheldon. I turned on the race after the accident had occurred and I knew just from the tone of the announcers and the fact that they would not show a replay that he had to have been killed in the crash. When I finally saw it, it was one of the worst that I have ever seen in my roughly 30 years of watching auto racing. The coverage that ABC provided was excellent in tone with only one slight problem. When they went to commercial it was invariably to a GoDaddy spot featuring Danica Patrick. It wasn’t their fault, the spots were pre-planned but if there was one point in time when you did not want to have the sexy commercials that was it. Plus, at what point in time do they get to change their brand image? Will they always be known for the slightly but not really risqué ads? The biggest thing to know about this game is that there is an actual school called Arkansas State, which is great to know if you are asked if there are more than one institutions of higher learning in the state of Arkansas. Cheer for NIU because they are the Huskies and at some point having a lovable dog as your mascot should be reason enough.

January 9th
Allstate BCS National Championship Game: LSU vs. Alabama (8:30 P.M. ESPN): It all comes down to this. The bowl season ends with a game that doesn’t even have the word Bowl anywhere in its title. I mention this every year but it pisses me off more than everything. The reason we don’t have a playoff is because of “the sanctity of the bowl system.” You don’t even end with a bowl game! Assholes.

I watched the first LSU – Alabama game and what I remember most vividly was the wide array of houndstooth clothing worn by the Alabama faithful. That was more impressive than anything I saw on the field that day. Not that it was a bad game, more like it was two dominant defenses going up against two average offenses so it seemed like nothing ever happened. For one of those Game of the Century matchups it really was anti-climactic. The fact that one can say that about a game that went to overtime is astounding.

I am expecting this game to be different. You have LSU playing in the Superdome. They are the better team on both sides of the ball and they know it. I can see them beating up Alabama early and then coasting to victory. That will bring the college football season to a welcome end. We could all use a break.

Best of 120 Minutes: Let’s start the New Year’s off with some old school Veruca Salt, shall we? Not like there is any new school Veruca Salt to choose from anyway.