Add 2 More to the List

You all recall the music documentary quest I embarked upon last year in the nadir of lockdown. I need to go back and examine where I finished. Well, not finished, as it's a living endeavor. Where I stand, rather.

The list of rockumentaries was long but distinguished. So last night I was in a solitary state of Empty-Nester Lester and decided to check back into the world of music+film. And despite there being many entries on the original list that I have yet to take in, check this out: there are a pair of new additions to the mix. To quote Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three, here's something fresh! 

First, I watched a film currently on Netflix called Count Me In. It's a piece on drummers and drumming through the years. Exclusively as told by rock drummers themselves. There's no trailer I can find, oddly (unless you click the link above and log into Netflix), so this synopsis will have to do:

Count Me In is an exhilarating celebration of the art of rock drumming, featuring some of the best drummers ever to have graced the drumkit. From Roger Taylor (Queen), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Stewart Copeland (The Police), Cindy Blackman (Santana, Lenny Kravitz), Keith Moon (The Who), Nick Mason (Pink Floyd) and John Bonham (Led Zeppelin), we are taken on a uplifting journey through some of the most iconic music ever created, focusing on the women and men with the sticks, their passions, culture and awe-inspiring energy.

There are way more interviewed drummers than what's listed above, and tons of clips through the years. Why they wouldn't make more noise about the fact that the Human Drum Machine Topper Headon of The Clash offers his thoughts therein is just crazy...

Second, I watched a film currently on Amazon Prime called Under the Volcano. It's about the music studio George Martin (the George Martin) created on the island of Montserrat in the late 1970's. The lineup of artists who recorded there in the waning time before natural disasters struck was . . . well . . . long but distinguished. Excellent old footage and new interviews. It's the second music documentary I've watched about a particular recording studio, and the second one done well.

I'll continue to plow through the extensive catalog of the music docs that caught my eye. Stay tuned.

If any of you have watched these or any other amidst the genre, chime in with recommendations or reviews. I am loath even to think about the notion of another lockdown at this point, but after the wedding we were slated to attend in New Orleans right after JazzFest weekend -- an event that had stayed the course even after the Fest was cancelled a couple of weeks ago -- just got nixed, there's a tad more angst and dread in the air.

I guess that calls for a punk rock documentary next.

Colorado's Been Great, Except for the Night I Shat My Pants and My Wife Puked

Howdy folks! The family is settling in out here. The kids are in school and I have been digging into the local whiskey/bourbon scene (Hint: it's good). We visited Buffalo Bill's grave today on Lookout Mountain. Neat trip. 

Things have been decent, all things considered. My kids are meeting people, the pool in our complex is big and there are abundant outdoor options. We treated the first couple weeks as a quasi-vacation to get the kids in good spirits. We took Rob up on his rafting idea, we went to a Rockies game, we ate at Benihana for one kid's birthday, and we did a couple nice hikes in the area. 

This is Lookout Mountain. No idea how it got that name. This pic is unrelated to the story, but it's pretty!

One idea that did not go so well was fondue. We are fondue experts. We do meat fondue every Xmas Eve (my wife's family tradition). It's great for big crowds - meat skewers, wine, relaxed pace, etc. We joked this spring at how many Melting Pot restaurants we saw around the Denver metro area. My kids had never been and our fondue pot is in a box, so we decided to eat there one night, in the heart of the downtown area of a great neighboring town (Louisville - pronounced Lewis-ville). It's an old coal mining town. 

Also unrelated to the story - this is Buffalo Bill's grave on Lookout Mountain. He left home at age 11 to do cattle drives. Badass.

We go to the restaurant and have to wait for a table. Wife and I order wine as we waited. We chose 8 oz over 5 oz for value. We then got seated and started the decadence. We started with cheddar cheese fondue. After I excused myself to go to the restroom, I came back to see that my wife had another 8 oz wine glass in front of her. She had decided that I would drive us all home and ordered a second for herself. How thoughtful.

Fast forward to the main course - we have a broth bubbling and all kinds of flesh getting pierced and cooked - beef, chicken, pork and fish. The kids love weapons and flesh. I love meat. My wife loves wine. Everybody is winning. 

We were all more than full by the time dessert came, but my kids would stick skewers in my eyes if I said no to chocolate fondue. I decided to treat myself to some dessert. I started dipping marshmallows and strawberries into the chocolate fondue, even though my system wasn't used to something as intense as this meal. I washed dessert down with a second wine glass, a 5-ouncer. My wife decided to order a third 8-ouncer. I knew this was a mistake. She is usually a two-drink lady, unless I am mixing up very weak vodka-sodas for her. But she's an adult who can make her own decisions and deal with the consequences, and when she thinks it's smart to order a third, she's not in the mood for my opinion. So I let it go. 

At this point, the cards were dealt. And let's be clear, there would be consequences across the board. During the meal, we started chatting with the manager, who was a great dude. He told us the history of the building, which was known as a haunted structure. He gave my kids the history of the haunted town. We drank and ate and heard about the history. But mid-story, as the chocolate fondue course started, some gurgling also started. I knew I was going to need some quality time on the throne. Soon. 

We paid and walked to our car. We had a 10-minute ride home. My wife was tipsy and chatty. I was sweaty and tense. We told our kids they would have to walk the dog as soon as we got home. We arrived home and parked and my stomach gurgled with more fervor. We walked up the stairs to our second floor apartment and then gravity started working. Aggressively. We got in the door and I was in a full-fledged panic. At that moment, my kids did what they sometimes do at the worst times - they became helpless. "Where's the leash? Where's his collar? Where are the doodie bags?" 

As they asked, I frantically tried to address things. And I lost. What I thought was a shart was so much more. I sharted once in my life as an adult. It was at work when I was in my 20's. I retreated to a stall, cleaned up, discreetly chucked a pair of boxers in the trash, felt bad for the maintenance guy who would find it, and flew free for a few hours. 

But this was no shart. It was a full-fledged bomb that hit me as I walked into my bathroom. I was four feet and five seconds from salvation. And I failed. And even worse, I still had to remove my shorts and undies after it happened. It was awful. I threw them away. There was clean-up work and a shower. It was all pretty unpleasant. And I liked those Hurley shorts!

Thankfully my wife didn't notice any of this. She came in and promptly passed out in her bed. I awoke at 3 AM to the sound of her vomiting. I knew 24 ounces of wine was too much for her. 

I woke up the next morning and found a generous coupon and hand-written note from the Melting Pot manager in my wallet. My wife now gets nauseous when she thinks of fondue. That poor manager will never see that coupon return to his restaurant. 

The Next One

College football season is upon us, and it’s been driven home this summer the extent to which football drives the money train for college athletics, with the universities of Texas and Oklahoma announcing their intent to bolt for a stacked Southeastern Conference, and power conferences subsequently discussing “alliances.” 

So of course, let’s discuss a potentially transcendent figure in college hoops. Azzi Fudd from northern Virginia was the No. 1-ranked recruit in the 2021 class and by many accounts the most intriguing prospect in years. She’s a 5-11 guard with professional level 3-point shooting range and uncommon maturity and grace. 

Fudd is a freshman at UConn, and her potential already has drawn comparisons to Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore. Fudd won a 3-point shooting contest at Steph Curry’s camp at age 15, guys included, and she’s played for three FIBA World Championship youth teams. Curry told ESPN last year that she possesses as pure a jump shot as he’s ever seen and said that if you were teaching someone to shoot, you’d show them Ray Allen, Klay Thompson and Azzi Fudd. 

UConn coach Geno Auriemma has tried to temper expectations surrounding Fudd, but said in the Hartford Courant that her footwork is that of someone preparing to be a pro. He said that her consistency is amazing and given her footwork and form, it appears that every shot she shoots is going in. She appears to have recovered completely from a severe knee injury she suffered in April 2019, when she tore both her anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments. 

Fudd’s name might be familiar to some in the audience. Her mother, Katie Smrcka-Duffy, was a college hoops standout and professional player whose career was scuttled by injuries. She named her daughter after Jennifer Azzi, the former college and pro star who she admired. Her stepfather is Tim Fudd, the former American U. standout who played in the early ‘90s and was part of an inexplicably one-sided conference rivalry. 

American and William and Mary were often within a spot or two of each other in the standings when both competed in the CAA, yet in a 15-year span AU won 26 of 31 games in the series (I believe that Nathan Smith still pisses off the site’s Pocket Pasha). [Fuckin' A right, Dave. Still not over the 2008 CAA Tournament.]

UConn figures to have a pretty fair backcourt with Fudd and Paige Bueckers, who as a freshman last season won Wooden and Naismith awards as national Player of the Year. They’ve known each other for years through AAU and national team play and were friends before Fudd decided to join the Huskies. No telling if Fudd can help UConn win national championships again. The Huskies’ last natty was 2016, the longest drought since their first of 11 titles in 1995 – if you can call regular Final Four appearances, a national presence, and a slew of All-Americans a “drought.” Regardless, she and they will be worth a look. For the next four years.

The Best Thing I Saw on the Internet This Week

This doesn't require a lot of words. Suffice it to say that it strikes a number of chords with me, and that Mandy Patinkin is a goddamn mensch.

@mandypatinktok

@alaska_webb thank you for finding us and sharing this! ✨ Sending big love and light to you and yours. More in comments. #grieving #cancer #dads

♬ original sound - Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn G

Cuisine is Stupid

We interrupt this solemn celebration of the passing of a legend to bring you this content, which is much more in keeping with our oeuvre. This post doubles as both a public service announcement and an assignment for our Director of Culinary Extremism (that's Marls, if you haven't checked the org chart recently).

The mad scientists at PepsiCo forgot to lock the door, and some ungodly rough beast slouched out, headed for Bethlehem and a whole lot of other places in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Forget the Wuhan investigation - the Department of Justice needs to get to the bottom of this shit.

I love spicy food. Most of my meals have some form of hot peppers, Tabasco, zhug, chili paste, or other flavor-appropriate heater. And I subsisted on Mountain Dew for a large portion of my twenties, though it's probably been two decades since I tasted that sickly-sweet nectar. But together? The chills that just shot through my spine weren't the good kind.

Fortunately, I don't have to try it. That's why we have Marls. You'll recall his work in the seminal "I Have Seen the Future and It Is Not the Double Down", wherein he took one for science and ate KFC's Frankensammich. At Penn Station, no less. 

When faced with a menace like this, we send our best. Good luck, Marls. We're all counting on you.

RIP, Charlie Watts

As a Stones fan who has read a couple books about them, it's hard not to be a Charlie Watts fan. When the Stones first came to NYC in the 60's, it was Mick, Keith and Brian Jones raising a ruckus with models and celebrities at the hot spots in town. Charlie Watts chose to sneak off to jazz clubs downtown to watch his heroes play. He was a class act and a pro from the start, and the backbone to that band over 5+ decades. 

Charlie passed away today. He was a titan of rock and roll and will be missed. 

(Feel free to add more and better videos to this)

How about this? Love this shit.

Write Riot

This website has had no shortage of posts about or featuring Joe Strummer. The Clash frontman would've turned 69 yesterday, and it's only fitting that we do a punk rock, man of the people sort of celly.

OBX Dave hepped me and Whitney to this short documentary piece on The Clash from the BBC. When I suggested to him that it would make for a good post. To which he responded that he didn't feel qualified to write about Strummer.

So this post is also a riposte. If we waited until we were qualified to write, this blog would've died in its infancy. Punk rock ain't about qualified, after all. And neither are we.

Fuck, This

While I wait for my brain fog to clear this morning and an actual post idea to take shape, here's 45 seconds of Roy Kent cursing on season one of Ted Lasso. Brett Goldstein's Kent is the show's moral center, if you ask me - consistent, honest, uncompromising in his integrity.  And he swears brilliantly.

Notify, Volume III

Here goes with Volume III of Notify, aka not on Spotify. (See Volume I and Volume II.)

A two-fer from a covers album from the 1990's. It was called Kiss My Ass: Classic KISS Regrooved, and it had plenty of filler. (Extreme's soiling of my favorite KISS song "Strutter" should be burned at the stake.) But Toad the Wet Sprocket, of all bands, had a terrifically deconstructive take on the band's most popular song.

Garth Brooks is a well-publicized Spotify holdout, and while there are great original songs in his catalogue that I could include here, I'll go with his Evan Lloyd-approved cover of "Hard Luck Woman." Here's Garth and KISS playing the song live -- crappy quality video, but you get the gist of two great tastes that go great together. Pretty cool.

Speaking of Evan, he sure did love his KIϟϟ. He would tell a story circa '91 about when he bedded a W&M co-ed we knew but had a few seconds of coitus interruptus when he had to get up to flip the KISS Destroyer LP on the turntable. Did so, and apparently didn't miss a beat. Alas, she was not named Beth.

Back to the songs... this spring rob and I exchanged our top picks for one of our favorite bands from our youth, The Police. Here's my list, in order. (I can't find his.)

Most of The Police catalogue has been Spotified... but there are some fun outliers worth Notifying. First, before there was The Police there was some low-level act called Strontium 90. They had an LP's worth of material, one track of which you'll recognize.

Before Sting and Stewart Copeland added Andy Summers to the mix, they recorded a single and B-side. "Fall Out" was the lead track and featured Copeland on drums and guitars, save a solo by some dude named Henry Padovani. Most preferred it to the more menacing B-side.  I did not. Here's a link to "Fall Out," and below is "Nothing Achieving." This is far more punk rock.

After The Police got big, Copeland would mess about and play most or all of the instruments on some songs, usually with inanely silly content. He operated under the moniker Klark Kent.  "Away from Home" was a fun tune, but below is my favorite track, "Don't Care," with a video featuring Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart's brother Miles Copeland (founder of I.R.S Records) masked and pretending to play instruments.

Stewart Copeland comes off like a super talented and cool dude.

Enjoy, and post more random stuff you can't find on the major music sites.

Time, It Marches On

The picture seemed innocuous enough. A family posted a photo on Facebook offering an entire cottage worth of furniture and household goods for free. "Cleaning out Cottage" read the handmade sign.

I almost skipped over it, but the address caught my eye. 8 Carver Road, Brewster, MA is a touchstone for me. It's the place where I took my first steps as an infant, where my wife and I honeymooned, where my first child took her first steps. Besides my current home, it's the most important piece of real estate in my life story.

Curious to know about the giveaway even as a part of me already knew and didn't want to acknowledge the facts, I texted my Mom to ask if she was aware. She was, and in fact had just been there in the days prior. "They're tearing down the cottage in Sept to build a home". And I sat there wistfully for a minute.

I suppose a bit of backstory is necessary at this point.

The little cottage at 8 Carver Road (943 square feet - I mean it when I say little) was built as a fishing shack in 1907. It was improved a bit by the time my great-grandfather Lawrence Moore purchased it in 1938 (little Easter egg there for people who've long wondered about the derivation of my middle name). Over time, the small cottages in the neighborhood were joined by larger beach homes, and a community called Brewster Park Club was established.

From 1938 to 2012, my mother's family spent most of their summers in that quiet beach community. The cottage sat on a double lot, so there was plenty of room to run around for kids. The front porch overlooked the ocean, and the smells from the fabled Brewster Flats mixed with honeysuckle to create a smell that sticks with me today. It was a two-minute walk to the community beach, and a one-minute walk to tennis courts and a playground.

The Brewster Store was a short drive from the park. As a kid, that meant penny candy. As an adult, good coffee, pastries, and a copy of The Boston Globe.

The cottage, which was called The Mooring in a nod to the family name, had three bedrooms, each equipped with a pair of twin beds. It had one bathroom and a glorious outdoor shower, a narrow but functional kitchen, a washing machine (but no dryer - that's what a clothesline is for), and a sitting room where we watched a lot of Red Sox games.

There were summers in my youth where I spent as much as a month at a time in Brewster. The cottage is my single most persistent memory of growing up. Later, my wife fell in love with it, too, and we spent weeks there together before and after having kids. Fried clams at JT's, chowder at Cobies, ice cream at Kate's, Brewster Whitecaps games at the local elementary school, long walks on the flats, laughter on the floats in the swimming area, leisurely paddles on a kayak along the shore, scraping our feet on the barnacles on the jetty, chasing hermit crabs in shallow water, marveling at dragonflies, taking down the flag and folding it every night like my grandfather taught me, shopping days in Chatham, and so many more staples of my past.

The sunsets at BPC, man. Spectacular.

Several Gheorghies have spent time in The Mooring's modest confines. I've got a great picture somewhere of Whit's first-born and my own recoiling with screaming laughter as he lifted a steamed lobster from a pot in the kitchen. They must've been around four years old. Dooger and his family came out to see us at least once, and Dave dropped by, as well.

Nine years ago, my grandmother told us that she was planning to sell the place, so we should make a point to get there one last time. My cousin and his then-fiancee joined us, and we cooked up a plan. We approached Nana and told her we'd like to buy it. 

"You can't afford it," she told us. We protested, offering to prove to her that we could. But like the good, stoic New Englander she was, she wouldn't budge. I think she was worried about creating divisions in the family, as her sister's kids weren't in on the plan, and even though my cousin and I would've kept the house open to the whole family, Nana held firm. She and my grandfather are both buried in the cemetery that runs alongside the front of the park, a stone's throw from the place they loved so much.

The Mooring sold for $725,000 in 2012. Zillow says it's worth $1.3m now.

I met the family that purchased it last summer. They seemed lovely. They have three boys in their teens, and they adore the place. But as it turns out, they're planning for a future where their boys will have kids of their own, and 943 square feet ain't much room for multiple generations.

And so, sometime this autumn, 75 years of my family's history will be bulldozed, and another family's memories will add a new chapter. I'm sure the new house will be gorgeous, just like the one next to it, which underwent a similar transformation about a decade ago. It is the very definition of bittersweet.

Time does march on. But gosh did it slow down when I was at that wonderful little cottage. I'll miss it more than I can tell you.

Kind of Classic

Sixty-two years ago, Miles Davis called together his band to record a studio disc of tunes and ideas that he had worked on for months and even years. It was a heavyweight lineup that included saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb. 

As was his custom, Davis gave band members few advance details about what they would play, as he often valued spontaneity and imagination over rehearsed precision. When they assembled in Columbia Records’ New York studios, Davis’ instructions were brief, and he and the producers began recording. The tracks were completed in two sessions, March 2 and April 22. 

The result, released on Aug. 17, 1959, is one of the monumental albums in the history of jazz and arguably in all American music. Kind of Blue changed jazz and influenced scores of musicians inside and outside the genre. I cannot explain Davis’ experimentation with and embrace of “modal” jazz, since I can’t read music and never studied music theory. 

I read that he believed that the new style provided soloists with more room to improvise if the background was kept simple and they played a melody of one or two “modes” or scales, rather than adhering to strict chord progressions, which was the foundation for jazz to that point. Davis told jazz critic and writer Nat Hentoff in an interview: “When you go this way, you can go on forever. You don't have to worry about (chord) changes, and you can do more with time. It becomes a challenge to see how melodically inventive you are...I think a movement in jazz is beginning, away from the conventional string of chords and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variations. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.” 

Blue consists of five tunes that cover 45:44, slower- and medium-tempo numbers that permit Coltrane and Adderley, Evans and Kelly, and Davis himself wide room to solo within the framework Davis set for each tune. The opening track, So What, starts with a floating, dream-like exchange between Evans and Chambers, then a cool call-and-response sequence between Chambers and the horns before the tune kicks into gear. Freddie Freeloader is a funky, mid-tempo piece. Blue In Green is a wonderful slow blues ballad. 

The two lengthy pieces that make up side two of the album, All Blues and Flamenco Sketches, feature remarkable improvisational and interplay sequences. It may sound pretty standard today, but in 1959 it was rocket launch stuff. Davis was restlessly creative and had no desire to simply re-hash his groundbreaking work from the 1950s and early ‘60s, though he certainly could have enjoyed a comfortable living doing so. 

He assembled insanely talented bands and relished working with young musicians who had different ideas and approaches. He once poached Stevie Wonder’s bass player, a terrific young musician and vocalist named Michael Henderson, after seeing him at a show. He experimented with rock and funk and African rhythms and electronic music, often to the consternation of traditional jazz fans. He mentored the likes of Coltrane and Evans and Chambers. He helped launch the careers of saxophonist Wayne Shorter, drummer Tony Williams, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, guitarist John McLaughlin and keyboardist Joe Zawinul, who with Shorter later founded the great jazz fusion group Weather Report. Jazz isn’t everybody’s jam. 

There’s plenty within the genre that I find unappealing. But Kind of Blue holds up if you’re sitting down with a beverage for a listening session, or as a soundtrack while puttering around the house. Give it a listen. Or another listen.

What Football Club Should a Gheorghie Support: A New Recurring Feature

It's said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Granted, it's hot as fuck here in the mid-Atlantic, but I've never been one to work that hard. No, this bit of genius was 100% serendipitous inspiration. Just let it come to me.

This is the opening weekend of the 2021-22 Premier League football season. For my wife, that signals weekend mornings spent largely with me screwed to the couch watching games. Today, I got a two-hour footy session with my weekly pickup game in before I hunkered down. But hunker I did.

I got cleaned up in time to catch Liverpool down in southeastern England to take on newly promoted Norwich City. The home side had a record-setting season in the Championship last year, winning the league and automatic promotion going away. The visitors were hoping to bounce back from last year's injury-damned season to reclaim their brilliant 2019-20 form.

As the game started, I got a look at Norwich City's dazzling kits. Unlike so many teams that sport various combinations of red and blue, The Canaries play their home matches in vibrant yellow tops with bright green accents. They're glorious, though I couldn't wear that scheme. (I'm more of a winter, you see.)

Here's what I'm talking about:

There's a detail here that struck me as I watched the match. Most English clubs wear the logos of either anodyne corporations (Manchester City/Chevrolet, Liverpool/Standard Chartered financial services, Brighton/American Express, Tottenham Hotspur/AXA) or oddball betting/gaming sites (Crystal Palace/W88, Southhampton/Sportsbet.io, West Ham United/Betway, et al). Not the elegant Canaries. Norwich proudly wears the Lotus emblem front and center.

Lotus, one of the world's fabled automotive brands, shares a Norfolk homebase with Norwich City, and their livery is green and gold, so there's a natural affinity between the two. And as I watched the early stages of the match, another affinity struck me.

So I texted Zman to tell him I'd found him a Premier League team to support. Zman is the most car-savvy fellow I know. I turn to him for all of my automotive queries. He's also very hip to the most upscale of roadgoing brands. (He bought me a subscription to Sports Car Market magazine, which is basically auto porn.) In fact, in his highly-lauded WCWAGD series, he chose a Lotus Elan for yours truly (in green and yellow, which turns out to be foreshadowing of a sort)

Zman should support Norwich City. They play a free-flowing attacking brand of football, so they're easy on the eyes - you might say they like to rev their engines. They don't care all that much about playing defense, so they play of lot of exciting games. Their best player is Teemu Pukki, who's from Finland. Zman loves Mika Hakkinen, Kimi Raikkonen, and Keke Rosberg - noted Finnish Formula One drivers. The Canaries just signed USMNT forward Josh Sargent, so there's a jingoistic angle for the taking.

I promise I'll work a little harder at finding teams for the rest of you. Or not - this one worked out pretty well for me. And Z.

Up the Canaries! And Up the Zman!

Content was requested. Here's your god damn content.

 Please choose your favorite lyric from LFO's "Summer Girls", one of the laziest, most atrocious examples of song writing in modern history. I will see you all in the comments with my selection.

Yeah...I like it when the girls stop by.. In the summer

Do you remember, Do you remember?

...when we met..That summer??

[Chorus:]

New Kids On The block, had a bunch of hits

Chinese food makes me sick.

And I think it's fly when girls stop by for the summer, for the summer

I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch,

I'd take her if I had one wish,

But she's been gone since that summer..

Since that summer

[Verse 1:]

Hip Hop Marmalade spic And span,

Met you one summer and it all began

You're the best girl that I ever did see,

The great Larry Bird Jersey 33

When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet

Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets

Call me Willy Whistle cause I can't speak baby

Something in your eyes went and drove me crazy

Now I can't forget you and it makes me mad,

Left one day and never came back

Stayed all summer then went back home,

Macauly Culkin wasn't Home Alone

Fell deep in love, but now we ain't speaking

Michael J Fox was Alex P Keaton

When I met you I said my name was Rich

You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

[Chorus:]

New Kids On The block, had a bunch of hits

Chinese food makes me sick.

And I think it's fly when girls stop by for the summer, for the summer

I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch,

I'd take her if I had one wish,

But she's been gone since that summer..

Since that summer

[Verse 2:]

Cherry Pez, cold crush, rock star boogie

Used to hate school so I had to play hookie,

Always been hip to the B-boY Style

Known to act wild and make girls smile,

Love New Edition and the Candy Girl

Remind me of you because you rock my world

You come from Georgia where the peaches grow

They drink lemonade and speak real slow

You love hip hop and rock n roll

Dad took off when you were 4 years old

There was a good man named Paul Revere

I feel much better baby when you're near

You love fun dip and cherry Coke,

I like the way you laugh when I tell a joke

When I met you I said my name was Rich

You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

[Repeat Chorus]

[Bridge:]

In the summertime girls got it going on,

Shake and wiggle to a hip hop song

Summertime girls are the kind I like,

I'll steal your honey like I stole your bike

[Verse 3]

Bugaloo shrimp and pogo sticks

My mind takes me back there oh so quick

Let you off the hook like my man Mr. Limpet

Think about that summer and I bug, cause I miss it

Like the color purple, macaroni and cheese,

Ruby red slippers and a bunch of trees

Call you up but whats the use

I like Kevin Bacon, but I hate Footloose

Came in the door I said it before, I think I'm over you

but I'm really not sure

When I met you I said my name was Rich

You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

[Repeat Chorus]

[Bridge:]

In the summer girls come and summer girls go

Some are worth while and some are so so,

Summer girls come and summer girls go

Some are worth while and some are so so,

Summertime girls got it going on

Shake and wiggle to a hip hop song

Summertime girls are the kind I like

I'll steal your honey like I stole your bike

[Repeat Chorus]

Gaga Up Your Ass

Gather round, Philistines, and expose yourself to some culture.

Back in November, I told you about Gaga, the dance/movement theory developed and popularized by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharian. At the time, my eldest daughter was interested in Naharian's work and aspired to study under him in Tel Aviv. Now, after a year of intensive dance study in college, she's obsessed.

This week, she participated in a series of online classes taught by Naharian and his company. It's very cool watching your kid do something she loves. For your viewing pleasure and knowledge accumulation, here's a little bit of a little dancer doing some Gaga.

Rootsy, feel free to upload some of your boy's work. We could all use a little culture in our lives.

The True Story of Joe Jackson

Sorry, good people. Those looking for "Say It Ain't So" or content on the banned ballplayer affiliated with the fictionalized quote should look to Eight Men Out or even Field of Dreams. Or here:

Or here:

Or here:

But today I'm here to talk about another Joe Jackson -- the piano playing one.  Today is his 66th birthday. Look over there. (Where?)

Who here knows Joe Jackson... beyond "Is She Really Going Out With Him?"

TR does, a little. And OBX Dave does, a lot. I know KT knows him quite well, as they played rugby together as lads in primary school. Kidding, buddy.  But Kenny is more of an aficionado than most.

Rob and I are old and savvy enough to have listened to one of the great debut albums of our time over and over in our Williamsburg and Arlington days. And we certainly looked sharp doing so. The first song on that album remains my favorite tune of his. "One More Time." Great stuff.

"Steppin' Out" made some MTV headway in its day -- no, no, mon, not dat "Steppin' Out," dis one:

But for a heavily charting '80s pop star, super stud pianist, lyrical pioneer, and true talent, he's gone relatively unsung.

It's his birthday. Give him a listen on your radio if you've got the time. He's the man. Put the playlist below on shuffle and give him one more time.

Appreciate Appreciate

Happy Duran Duran Appreciation Day, kids. In celebration, here's their new single and my favorite classic.

You Still Need More Sneakers

Actually recurring filler!  You know you need more sneakers.  Here are some more bargains.

Dennis Busenitz has an $80 skate shoe with Adidas with a good silhouette in a bunch of colorways.  I like the mac n cheese for winter, Mark prefers gray and yellow.  You can't go wrong either way.

Dressy leather sneakers are popular these days.  Cole Haan, Johnson & Murphy, Allen Edmonds all make pretty much the same thing for $100 or more.  K-Swiss makes a nearly identical shoe for $31.50.

Asics is widely overlooked despite having some clean designs and interesting colorways.  For example, these $60 Tiger Runners make a great summertime beater, especially for those of you with more conservative tastes.  The dirtier these get, the better they look.  They gray ones are only $50.

If you're more stylistically adventuresome, these Curreo IIs in green are also $50.  Mow the lawn while wearing these and the grass stains won't show.

One of my all-time favorite oddball Asics is the Gel-Lite III.  The tongue is split down the middle.  I don't think anyone else did that.  They come in a ton of different colorways but Asics oddly doesn't put them all on one page.  Here's a green and yellow version for you Tribe Pride guys, and an ivory and black version for the pianists out there, both for $110.  You can sear your retinas with this lime green version for $100.  I'm all in on the $80 gray and pink joints.

And if you're going to play tennis I can't say enough good things about the Asics Gel Resolution series.

If you want retro runners with a smorgasbord of color options and you don't want to break the bank, Diadora has a wide range of Camaros and Camaro Iconas (another Tribe Pride version!) starting at $40.  There's no wrong way to go with all these colors but my $40 is on these tan and orange beauties.

Too far out there for you?  Fine.  Put up $55 for these Jog Light Cs and thank me next time you see me.

Hopefully this helps you get straightened out, at least from the ankles down.

Froadin Mogs

More Mogs!  I'm on Morgan Motor Company's email list so I'm periodically treated to insanity like this:

That's right, they converted the Plus Four into an off-road Safari-style contraption called the Plus Four CX-T.  No one needs this.  In fact I'm not sure anyone wants this.  And perhaps Morgan knows both assertions are true--they're only making eight and each will cost £170,000 (that's about $237,000 according to Google).

I'm conflicted.  On one hand, this seems like those stupid $300 Best Made hipster axes.  Just as the young man in Cobble Hill with a beard and beautiful black and white portrait tattoos will never actually fell anything with his fancy hatchet, no one is going to tear their quarter-million-dollar CX-T around dirt roads in Great Malvern only to wind up sitting on a cargo box staring off into the distance with a random make-shift campfire behind them.  Or maybe it's more like commercials from the 1980s that make relatively mundane or stupid toys seem exciting, typically by putting the kids in some awesome backyard with tons of rocks and trees and a creek.

On the other hand, I'm delighted that people are off proudly and passionately doing ridiculous shit like this.  They could've turned the Plus Four into some stupid seven-passenger SUV with fifteen cup holders, five TV screens, a digital gauge cluster, and no buttons on the dashboard.  Instead they made something really unique, albeit dumb.

Car guys are still out there!

Gheorghasbord: Bargain Bin

Running a pipe cleaner through the mind tunnels so we can get the good stuff unstuck.

I shed an involuntary tear a couple of days ago when I saw this Tweet:

If the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique was the soundtrack of my sophomore year of college, Mickey's was the libation. Dave, Whitney and I would gingerly step over the discarded 'loobsters' (upon removal, the tops of Mickey's bottles resembled little metal crustaceans, and could cut a fella's feet just as easily), plop down on the couch, open three more bottles, and fire up the six-disc CD changer. The demise of that iconic brand was cause for lamentation of time gone by, the inevitable inexorable march to our own final malt liquor buzz.

As it turns out, my tears were misplaced, as @DanShuftan clarified in his next Tweet:

Not cool, Dan.

In much better news of the cheap, I've stumbled upon a site that's going to both cost and save me a lot of money fueling a habit. DHgate is essentially Chinese eBay, a cornucopia of consumer goods, only at prices significantly below those available for comparable goods here in capitalism's, um, capital. I got turned onto it by the good people at SiriusXM FC during a discussion about places to find cut-rate soccer jerseys.

I own an increasing number of such jerseys, from the Dutch national team 2014 World Cup top, to a DC United Pride pregame warmup, to a Sporting Kansas City kit my brother in-law got me a few years back, among others. But these things ain't cheap - even a replica jersey goes for close to $100 at the major outfitters. So imagine my glee when I went looking for an N'golo Kante France kit on DHgate and found one that looked decent (at least online) for $18. At that price, even if it showed up made of paper machè it wouldn't be much of a loss.

But when it showed up, it was damn near perfect, with the Euro 2020 patches in the right place and seemingly authentic Nike fabric. And so I grabbed Marcus Rashford England Euros top for the same price. 

I might have a problem.

Speaking of problems, and of athlete merch that I need to buy (preferably on the cheap), the artist formerly known as the Knighthawk has become that much more badass. After a well-reviewed first season in the NBA, Nathan Knight signed a two-way deal with Minnesota this week. 

We're in the market for Knightwolf stuff. Danimal, JMU's Matt Lewis just signed with Minnesota, as well. We'll look out for deals for you, too.

And finally, this isn't directly on point, but when you hit a tough three-pointer with a million dollars on the line, you get some run here. With his Boeheim's Army team trailing 67-66 to Team 23 and a target score of 69 meaning that his opponent could win The Basketball Tournament with any basket, Keifer Sykes took advantage of his defender's momentary distraction to hit a pull-up three worth a cool mil.

Sykes, who played at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, announced after the game that he'd signed a deal with the Indiana Pacers. Pretty decent day.

Tales from the Dugout: Enjoying the Final Ride (Part 3)

And like a puff of smoke, it is gone. 

I am now 1,800 miles from my former town, having landed safely in a suburb of Denver. My 11 y/o son is now 180 miles from his former town, starting his second and last week of sleepaway camp in Massachusetts. But we were hot and heavy into our summer travel season not that long ago. Allow me to update you. 

When we last chatted, my team was 3-1 in its summer league. We had a let-down loss to our big rival (the team we whooped in our spring league final) early in the summer season. I decided not to put the foot on the gas that game. The kids were spent after many high-stress games. But besides (and after) that game, we were the Big Pun of our league, crushing a lot. A LOT. We finished our summer regular season 10-1. In our ten wins, we outscored our opponents by a combined score of 138-55. And we weren't being mercenaries. I flipped our lineup against weaker teams, every kid pitched at least once and we moved kids around in the field. 

We won a share of our regular season title, which meant a t-shirt. But I wanted gold from a playoff title. And I wanted a front-loaded playoff schedule b/c my kid and I were leaving town. That meant a quick first-round playoff game. We tried to avoid using our strong pitchers. We were tied 3-3 after one inning. I put my kid in to pitch in the second. He throws strikes, but does not throw hard. It was his second time pitching that season. He managed to go five innings. He threw 4/4/8 pitches in the 4th/5th/6th innings. Great stuff and a 15-5 win for us. 

That win sent us to the semis on Thurs 7/22. I knew the semis would be my kid's last game, b/c of sleepaway camp. He was devastated. He became close friends with many teammates, and realized he would likely never see most of them again. Tough. 

My team came to play that day, despite only having nine kids available. We laid the smack down in a 14-2 win. I had visions of subbing out my kid with two outs in the last inning, allowing him to jog off while parents cheered. But with nine kids, that was not an option. The game ended, my kids started celebrating and I hugged my son in the infield (we were the away team, so we played D while the home team got their last licks). He looked at me and asked if that was his last game with his team. I sadly told him it was. And he started crying. And it got dusty for Dad as well. He helped take us to the finals, but would not be there to help us win it. An assistant snapped this shot, which shows off the Ripken patch that means so much to the kids. 

So yeah, it's been tough. I helped schedule the summer league championship game I couldn't attend. The opponent was our rival, the team we whooped in the spring final, but lost to in the summer league. They pushed the game date back to make sure their ace was rested, which confirmed I couldn't coach, even without my kid there. On Wednesday night, while my wife and I were struggling through Indiana traffic on our way to a South Bend hotel, she loaded the game on an app, and we followed it pitch-by-pitch, real time. Technology is neat. 

The assistant running the show that night followed my instructions with pitching and the lineup. My kids were tied 2-2 after four innings, but pulled it out at the end, winning 5-2. That means one more trophy for my kid, which I hope eases the pain of losing friends. At the end of the day, I just hope this experience builds his confidence and skills and allows him to make some new friends in a new state. It's a gut-punch to me to realize my baseball coaching might be over (after a 27-6 season across all competition), but it could not have ended better. And my son and I will have stories from an epic bonding experience we can share the rest of our lives. 

MTV Turns 40: An Open Thread

Today MTV turns 40. Yes, four decades ago, a hip new cable television channel went from SMTPE color bars to the Apollo 11 launch and moon landing to a montage of the soon-to-be-famous MTV logo where the moon-spiked stars 'n' bars used to be.

Many trivia nerds like me have known for some time that the first video to air on MTV ever was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," cleverly. The second? I'll give you a hint: it was by an artist whose hairstyle was copied by not one but three students at Ridgemont High.

Here are the first two hours of MTV's first transmission. We first see the VJ's at 8:45 (all of them, including rob's crush Martha Quinn), followed by some sweet-assed 1981 ads. An amusing stroll.

MTV launched shortly before my 11th birthday. It was free to cable subscribers, and we had just gone from rabbit ears to cable that spring. Several years later they started to charge, at which point I missed out for a few years. But by my high school years it was back to fee-free, just in time for hair metal, an onslaught of U2, and Debbie Gibson vs Tiffany. (There's a clear winner in that battle, mind you.)  

Somewhere in our midst, MTV stopped being Music Television and began airing reality show marathons, stupid cartoons (that I watched when I was 23), and other dreck that aren't videos. You know which "special character" on your keyboard is responsible for this, but it remains lame. Anyway, MTV used to be fun and actually relevant in a simpler time, but every rose has its thorn.

What early memories do the GTB staff have of MTV, if any? Add a video or a quick blurb below.

-----------

TR: I never thought Pat Benatar was attractive. Or Madonna. I was all in on Belinda Carlisle. I had an older sister who usually controlled the remote, so my childhood was basically 69% Duran Duran videos. I hated it at the time. I like it now, and can see how cocaine could make Duran Duran tunes really fun. I used to love Friday Night Video Fights. 

-----------

rob: 120 Minutes, man. That was the shit. The author of this post and I saw this song late at night during a Williamsburg summer and were blown the fuck away. Got up the next morning and drove to the mall in Virginia Beach (I think?) to buy the CD, which got worn out that summer. And Martha Quinn was all that.

Ed. Note: It was Patrick Henry Mall in Newport News. Which is, amazingly, still standing.