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.