The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day Twelve

On the Twelfth Day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me

Twelve Weird Couplings

Eleven Months of Dipshits

Ten (plus) Buffalo wins
Nine Joyous Moments
Eight Hot (or Lukewarm) Takes

Seven Books For Reading

Six Footie Jerseys

Five musicians from San Antonio known as the Sir Douglas Quintet

A four-part Japanese life strategy (as told by our man in the OBX)

Three 80's Baseball Sports Looks

Too Many Entries,

and a Cameo That Will Go Down in History

Greetings to all the gheorghies on this New Year’s Eve, one that is dreary, muggy, and rainy here in southeastern Virginia. How perfectly apropos for a year that began with promise and ended with resignation.

My Day 12 last time around included this at the end: 

“I have tickets to They Might Be Giants in DC with Rob and The Black Crowes in Va Beach unless they implode again. Seeing the Hoodoo Gurus down here in November. Beyond that: Cold War Kids, The Allman Betts Band, Southern Culture On the Skids, Sturgill Simpson, The Revivalists, Waxing Poetics, The Lumineers, . . . join me, gheorghies?”

Well, I didn’t see any of those shows, for one obvious reason. Nor did I see The Revivalists, Violent Femmes and X, Wilco and Sleater-Kinney, The Black Keys, and Patton Oswalt -- all of which I had tickets purchased to see. 

I did catch the Drive-By Truckers and Carbon Leaf on back-to-back nights in DC and Leesburg alongside several gheorghies. Terrific shows they were, made more glorious now by the finality of such endeavors.

For the first handful of Gheorghemases, I would reserve Day 12 exclusively for appreciations. While 2020 doesn’t seem to have made itself a strong candidate for such a list, there are a number of hidden treasures within the past 366 that stand out. Indeed, lamenting this shabby year in review and yet uncovering some real greatness is something of a paradox.

To that end, here are a dozen weird couplings for 2020…

Live Music vs. The Absence Of
If you’d have told me a year ago that my Concerts Attended number would go from 29 last year to 6 this year… and that the latter half of those shows would be masked and distanced and a bit stressful, I’d have told you it would utterly and completely suck. And I would have been right. 

But there were some unforeseen bright spots. Rhett Miller, the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, took to doing one-hour shows from his basement every week and then several times a week. The format was “pay what you want," though if you tip the most of the show, you get a request at the following one.

Which I did.

In the absence of live music, I'll take this.

Lockdown Laziness vs. Confined Creativity
As much as I should have utilized all the days and nights of lockdown to get a hundred home projects done and do something special... I didn't. There was much lounging. 

That said, I also pined for the lost days of packed venues enough to finish a project I’d been mulling for a while:

Want to see a cool gift? The QR code plays the song, the song is represented by the waves on a cool wooden plaque. My woman is a hip, hip, hip lady.

Punk vs. Mainstream Rock, Product Placement Version

I was amused and impressed when I saw The Clash Chuck Taylors.

Then I saw the Led Zeppelin pinball machine(s). Check this shit out.

Eric Clapton and Van Morrison vs. Eric Clapton and Van Morrison

When I was in high school (just a few years ago), classic rock reigned supreme, and Clapton Is God was a generally accepted principle. Eddie Van Halen was the new regime, but Slowhand was the man all the young dudes loved.  Meanwhile, Van the Man was the ladies' choice but unisexually appreciated. He may not be listed in Steven Hyden's Five-Album Test article, but a lot of folks would suggest that Astral Weeks/Moondance/His Band and the Street Choir/Tupelo Honey/Saint Dominic's Preview certainly qualify. To wit, 88% of every mixtape made for a girl in the 1980's contained "Crazy Love," "Brown-Eyed Girl," or "Tupelo Honey"... and they all contained "Wonderful Tonight."

That was then, this is now. Through the years, I learned about how Van Morrison was something of an insufferable prick with a massive ego. And within the last year I listened to the Spotify podcast on The Clash (narrated brilliantly by Chuck D) and heard about Eric Clapton's 1976 rant on a Birmingham. England stage about "keeping Britain white" and what-not. Real vulgarian type of stuff.  Yuck.

Fast forward to 2020. Van Morrison's creative content dried up years ago, but he has rediscovered his muse in the form of anti-masking songs. He has four now.  The most recent is a collaboration with Clapton called "Stand and Deliver." The afore-linked article about it begins with a great line: "Eric Clapton and Van Morrison, both age 75 and therefore at 220 times the risk of death from COVID-19 compared to people 18 to 29, have released a blues-rock track raging against public health codes." 

Oh, well. On the plus side, they will get some fresh ink written about them when we issue the next version of GTB's Top 20 Douches in Rock and Roll.

"Stand and Deliver" vs. "Stand and Deliver"
You decide.  I know which song Dick Turpin would prefer.

Gone from Home vs. Never Gone from the Heart

On a personal note, my first-born fled the nest this year. She's at the University of South Carolina, and COVID struck a few weeks after she got there. It unnerved me rather significantly. And then she got better. And made tons of friends, despite the state of things. And went to an SEC football game. And hosted her Dad for a weekend, where he got awfully jealous. And then she got a 4.0. 

And like rob mentioned, the lockdown downtime I got with her before she left was unforeseen and exactly what the doctor ordered before her departure. 

Love vs. Hate, Beatles Style

I mentioned Steven Hyden earlier. He's one of my favorite music writers and has been for some time. I think I first read him at Grantland.  I like his tastes, his style, his consistent output.

A couple of weeks ago he posted on Uproxx, his current home, with a piece called The Best Beatles Songs, Ranked. Whew, there's a big and bold idea. I do like that he says up front that such lists are inherently stupid. As Neko Case said, "Ranking lists do NOT represent music or art. That’s some sports bullshit." I said during Gheorghemas three years ago that I dropped good/better/best/bad/worse/worst because "there's just shit you like and shit you don't." But... it's always fun to hear other people's favorites.

Hyden's list is a highly enjoyable, informative read, and he personalizes it quite a bit. There are selections obviously and far less so, and like I sometimes do in such challenging music lists, he totally cheated. (See his #2.) It's worth the time it takes, and you should definitely have the Beatles songs at your fingertips if you read it. You'll want to play one or two you haven't dug up in a while.

One weird thing is that the word "hate" appears in this piece eight times. Mostly in the context of which Beatles hated which songs, or each other. Seems like this labour of love list would dispense with the hate a bit more.

Fran Healy vs. Fran Healy

(also titled "12 is a lot of anything")

Fran Healy was a light-hitting catcher in the 1970's, most memorably for me as a member of the 1977 New York Yankees I bandwagonly cheered for as a kid. My grandmother got his autograph for me when she jumped onto the dugout in Lauderdale that spring, a story I mentioned in the GTB comments recently. In the early 2000's, I got the Extra Innings baseball package to watch and chronicle every miserable game the wretched Mets played, and Fran Healy added color commentary to many of those games. He was light fare, as silly and ineffectual as the team was.  This was my favorite exchange between Healy and the all-timer past his time Ralph Kiner in 2005 after a home run. Fran: He got all of that, he knew it, and he was Cadillacking around the bases.

Ralph: Well, you know what they say about Cadillacs . . . home run hitters drive Cadillacs.

F: I tell you, Ralph Kiner coined that phrase many years ago, and kids in the Little Leagues from that moment on said, “Bunt? Forget bunting, I’m going for the long ball.”

R: That’s where that expression came from – he Cadillacked around the bases.

F: Did it come from that?

R: I doubt that.

They don't call them the best color men in baseball for nothin’.

And then there's Fran Healy. The frontman for the band Travis.  I dig their stuff, it's Britpop, fairly mellow, like the Scottish Connells. (There's a musical connection 'twixt the two bands, actually.) You may have heard "Why Does It Rain on Me," "Turn," "Writing to Reach You," "Side," but here they are singing "Sing" at Live 8 some 15 years ago.

Release vs. Resurrection
Last year I assured you that the debut album by Les Coole and The Cukes would come out in 2020. It didn't.  No excuses, what with all the downtime. I did get a few songs done, as Rob linked to last Gmas post.  I am extremely disappointed to confess that my dream of an album release simply did not happen.

And yet, something I was dead sure did not happen, something glorious and profound, did occur. From the ashes, Penny Baker and Les Coole (and original ORF Rocker DJ Bombay) rejoined the on-air crew at WODU for ORF Rock after an 18-month hiatus that by all accounts was permanent. Same lovable co-hosts; same punk, alt, and Elvis bent; same technical difficulties. But we are back on! I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. 

Wednesdays at 7pm, starting back up in a few weeks. Give us a listen.  Here was one of our shows from a few weeks ago. In it, we play a Les Coole and The Cukes song, so there's that solace.

Strychnine vs. Arsenic

So, 2020 was a disaster by any measure. I don't need to recap it. (But if you need that, go watch Netflix's Death to 2020 for some fun.)

But if you could replay the year and not have any of the disease, death, destruction, lockdown, worry, fear, and angst that COVID caused... but Donald Trump were re-elected... would you?  Lots good did actually happen in 2020. Some things rather momentous.

Downward Trending vs. A New Hope

Gheorghe: The Blog, through the years, based on the Number of Posts:

2003: 14

2004: 129

2005: 219

2006: 103 (wtf??)

2007: 192

2008: 373

2009: 394

2010: 402 (!!!)

2011: 365 (perfect)

2012: 307

2013: 338

2014: 289

2015: 265

2016: 235

2017: 212

2018: 216

2019: 193

2020: 258

Hallelujah. Long Live Gheorghe.

Hard Drive vs. Spotify

I grew up with cassettes. Buying them, making them, popping them into the car stereo as soon as I got in, repair-splicing them when they'd break, and collecting as many as I could. When I was in college I switched to CD's. And how. What you can see in one of the Les Coole Studios shots above is a fraction of the 2000+ discs I collected at some stupid price (although Columbia House and BMG were good to me) in the 90's and beyond.

About 14 or 15 years ago, I ripped most of those to mp3. iPods and iTunes made it relatively simple (though still time-consuming), and the portability was amazing. I compiled a hard drive with 37,000 songs on it, and it was a treasure. On this day 12 years ago I related the saga of accidentally wiping said hard drive (back when it had just 22k tunes) and having to pay handsomely for its recovery. I filled my friends' iPods and hard drives for them. It was gratifying.

Of course, of course that technology went by the wayside. Firstly because that's what technology does, secondly because as soon as I and my completist self feel like I've got it all, it goes away and renders my collection obsolete. Natch. 

Spotify and other streaming services came along and eliminated the novelty of me having an album or a song that people couldn't find and hadn't heard in ages. Oh well. The truth, however, is that it's an amazing development (if one that squeezes artists out of nearly all royalties) and very useful. I have shared music over the medium with several of you. Zman and I have a collaborative playlist and share rare/new stuff. I dig it.

There are still some songs that aren't on Spotify, some that never will be, that I carry in my own collection. That's a post for another day. For now, though, here's my annual best-of-the-year list.

While you peruse and listen to it, keep this in mind. I love you, gheorghies. You people are the finest in all the land, by some margin. Happy New Year.

What Car Should A Gheorghie Drive — rob Edition

rob recently bought a Mini Cooper convertible. His instincts are good, but this isn’t the exact car he should drive. In another overly long post, I’ll tell you the right car for rob.

rob is compact. He is also light. Based on this post he appears to be swift and nimble, some might say athletic and lithe.

No one would consider him to be particularly powerful or intimidating, in the physical sense. But he is a thinking man. He enjoys self-improvement, working on things over and over to improve his skills and get better. He loves sports in all forms and often waxes poetic about them, finding the sublime where others see only mundanity. I also sense that he’s meticulous about some aspects of his life, like his attire—he works hard at looking like he didn’t work hard to look cool (or at least something approaching cool).

rob should drive a 1965 Lotus Elan in British Racing Green with a yellow skunk stripe.

The Elan is the epitome of British sports cars. Some consider it to be the ultimate roadster. Others say it is the best handling car ever. It is the perfect embodiment of Colin Chapman's philosophy to "simplify, then add lightness.”

Chapman also noted that "Adding power makes you faster on the straights; subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere." The Elan is really light—rob's 1965 version only weighted 1,485 lbs. For comparison, a 2018 Mazda Miata weights 2,332 lbs. One of the reasons the Elan is so light is that it is really really small. Like, insanely tiny.

The Elan only made 105 horsepower, but with so little mass to cart around it could hit 60 MPH in 7.6 seconds. And with a low center of gravity, short wheelbase, and genius suspension geometry, skillful drivers barely need to use the brakes to navigate turns. Despite being wildly underpowered compared to other cars of the period, the Elan could get around the track faster than everyone else through a combination of small size and cleverness. That said, it takes practice to hustle one of these things through the chicanes. You can't just jump in and drive like Jim Clark, you have to learn how to finesse an Elan properly.

And it's really fucking cool! For example, before she was Olenna Tyrell, Diana Rigg tore around England in a catsuit and an Elan. Paul Newman had one too.

Talk to any Elan owner or read their comments on message boards or car-related websites, and you'll see just how much people love these cars. Once you get to know one of these diminutive little buggers they inspire tremendous loyalty and affection. That's what rob should drive.

Twelve Days of Gheorghe-mas: On the 12th Day

On the twelfth day of Gheorghe-mas
Big Gheorghe gave to me

Twelve Appreciations
Eleven fillers filling
Ten Righteous Moments
Nine Headlines We Want (in 2009)
Eight maids-a-milking?
Seven clips you-tubing
Six gifts worth giving
Fiiiiive(ish) feeeet of height
Four awful words
Three Richmond wins
Two sweet 'stache photos

And a fat guy in a jer-sey


Socrates once proclaimed that "the unexamined life is not worth living." My knowledge of the originator of this quote garnered me two cases of premium beer off Rob in 2005. Like he said this week, don't bet against me on matters of trivia. But I think there's a corollary to the great thinker's quote, perhaps by Rob's buddy H.D. Thoreau. You can't just halt at examining life if you aren't appreciating it. The wherewithal to cull out life's cherrystones from the seaweed -- hell, or to even make seaweed salad . . . now I'm getting hungry -- anyway, it's an art form and a key ingredient in ultimate peace of mind. To that end, I set about mentioning a dozen things, blog-related or otherwise, that I truly appreciate as I look back on the past calendar year. I intended to associate them via this clever new blog gadget to my Top 12 (or 20) songs of the year for Day 12 of Gheorghemas.

And then a funny thing happened . . . and by "funny" I mean "a punt in your groin with an iron boot" kind of funny. While trying to move my voluminous library of songs onto a new external hard drive, in one click of a button I managed to reformat my drive and lose 22,000 songs. Twenty two thousand. That's five years and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of fanatical devotion to completism, audiophilia, whatever you want to call it. Down the tubes. "There's a Tear in my Beer" would have been the backdrop to that night's fiasco, but alas, there was no soundtrack to my misery. Not even "The Sound of Silence."

(I have placed my faith in data recovery in the fine folks over at Drive Savers in California. I am crossing my fingers, toes . . . pretty much every crossable body part except my vas deferens. Stay tuned.)

As such, this post now represents the very last grains of my music library, a small, scattered sampler of the best tunes from the past year for your enjoyment. You should be able to listen to them here, though I have wrecked this blog's template just to get a sub-par method of doing so. I am only now getting to finishing off our G-mas segment, which kind of works even better as a look back now that the year is almost at an end.

For those keeping track, the 12 Days of Gheorghemas last 30 days.


12 Appreciations

"The Righteous Path" by Drive-By Truckers.mp3

"Sequestered In Memphis" by The Hold Steady.mp3

One thing a few lame-brained mouse-clicks cannot erase is the memory of many an astounding live show I took in during 2008. It would be hard to conjure a better candidate for "best concert(s) of 2008" than a pair of mid-week March nights of Wilco in the tiny Tipitina's in New Orleans, especially considering the venue, the set lists, the extraordinary circumstances of how I was able to go and how I got there, plus the fact that I got backstage the second night. That said, concerts by Spoon, Old 97's, the Avett Brothers, Wilco again (in Brooklyn), Drive-By Truckers, and Springsteen all held their own. And top billing might not actually go to the Tip's gigs but instead the Truckers/Hold Steady gig I saw in Raleigh in November. We drove down on a Monday night -- there's very little like a three-hour, Budweiser-fueled car ride to rev a few folks up for a show -- to the miniscule Lincoln Theatre and watched two great acts that go great together. THS opened, and Craig Finn wailed away even as he reminded me of Bryan Spurrier. Then the Truckers came on and took it up a notch. Catch any of the aforementioned bands at a destination near you. (But the smaller the venue, the better. I think I'm done with stadium & arena shows until I get too old to stand.) I do love me some live rock and roll.

"Campus" by Vampire Weekend.mp3

2008 was a reunion year for me: my 20th high school reunion and my 15th college reunion. (There's a joke involving math in there somewhere.) I walked back on the grounds of my high school for the first time in 17 or 18 years, back to the same old corridors where delinquency of all kinds dominated my time. A few weekends later I was once again roaming the W&M campus in a zig-zagged stagger, well-trod territory on both counts. The one thing I truly appreciated in both cases was the bit of time-travel performed, enabling -- dictating -- that I'd reprise the same role of class clown / fraternity social chairman that I had once upon a time. And everybody else did much the same, falling into the same old habits and falling down the same old staircases. Can't wait to get back.

"Tickle Me Pink" by Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit.mp3

Something old, something new. Just when we thought we'd scared all the icky girls out of this corner of the blogosphere with our esoteric wit and rampant juvenilia, females were discovered hanging around our parts. (Right on cue . . . cannot possibly get through the paragraph about the ladies without a genital-related innuendo.) And I'm not merely talking about Rob's wife lurking silently, trying to see what it is Rob does during "work hours" and which famous females he'd like to boink. Nor do I mean queens like Geoff and Mark dressing in login drag as their female counterparts. ("Nick the Dick" in Bachelor Party had a "counter-part," for those wondering how that would possibly be stretched into a phallic euphemism.) No, I'm talking about real live commentor chicks like Shlara (blowing by me on NBA knowledge like Robert Pack with a sick crossover) or KQ of the Queen Beaches (where music and fashion are always the passion). There was even a rumor that a blog summit between the latter and two reps from G:TB happened sometime this summer, but we can neither confirm nor deny that one. (Awww, yeah.) I for one appreciate their presence here and hope they stick around.

"Freeway" by Aimee Mann.mp3

"New York" by Cat Power.mp3

Speaking of famous females someone would like to boink . . . uh, I mean, I have come to appreciate these ladies for each of her God-given gifts. Here's to sexy rock chicks, and may there be many more of them to come.

"Lost Coastlines" by Okkervil River.mp3

It was a losing year for the Detroit Lions and, to a lesser degree, me. I lost my golf clubs in a cab. I lost the nicest pair of sunglasses I'd ever owned . . . somewhere. And I lost 22,000 mp3 files, in case you missed the several paragraphs of whiny self-pity earlier. But you know what? That's really not much by comparison. In this world economy, a lot of folks lost their job, their fortune, their shirt, their ass. Much more significantly, people lost loved ones, some of them prematurely. Rob and I have known all too well that latter catastrophe in the past decade, so for what (and who) I didn't lose in 2008 . . . I'm pretty friggin' grateful. Plus, I have a backup bag of sticks I'm using these days that's far more commensurate with my golf game.

"Rebel Side of Heaven" by Langhorne Slim.mp3

. . . and as Rob pointed out to me, this song reminds us of more than one of those late, great comrades of ours. "Well, we ain't goin' to hell/We're goin' to the rebel side of heaven." Keep 'em chilled for us, boys. I'm elated that the memory of these cats isn't even close to fading away.

"Dance With Me" by Old 97's.mp3

Here's to losing your fastball but still being able to muster quality starts. Like the post-heyday 97's, I've lost a few steps . . . in just about everything I do. My storied debonair good looks and winsome charm are considered fables at this point. What passed for athletic prowess is laughably outdated. I'm even a tad slower with a joke and (dare I say it) my drinking ain't what it could be. Still, like Dear Abby once told me, I have no complaints. I am what I am and I ain't what I ain't. I think most of us have graduated from glory years in many a category, and yet I'd still hold us up against most comers. Here's to hanging on for another year. (But Rhett Miller may need a divorce and a case of Old Grand-Dad if he's ever going to rediscover his Muse.)

"Strange Overtones" by David Byrne & Brian Eno.mp3

These two guys got together for the first time in 20-some years to keep doing what they do -- making music. This August marked the 20th year that I have been getting together with Rob to do what we do -- drink beer and make fun of each other, both ad nauseum. We used to do it several times a week with a mass of dudes. Now life has relegated us to a few times a year with just fragments of our old gang, but we're still pretty lucky in that regard. Hard to believe that it was a full two decades ago that he and I (and Sentence Boy Dave) were living on a freshman hall full of random idiots, but then again, Ronald Reagan was president, the Mets were thinking dynasty, and R.E.M. was still the best band going. Good Lord, are we fucking ancient. A tip of the cap (probably a derby or some old man tam o'shanter) to old cronies, drinking buddies, the dudes, whatever you call them.

"Kids" by MGMT.mp3

And here's to the kids. No, I don't mean my daughters; good gravy, they aren't bloggable material, nor are they permitted to visit this space until I'm long dead. No, I mean the young turks who've come on board at Gheorghe: The Blog and taken us in an array of new, silly directions. Dennis, Mark, and the artist currently known as Rhymenocerous represent the Young Guarde and have all bolstered the breadth of our output's inane quality (not to mention quantity) upon their arrival. And it goes without saying that the adoption of prodigal son and doofus overlord TeeJay once upon a time has evoked more head-shaking grins than any personnel action made before or since. May the G:TB AdSense Happy Hour occur before we're in nursing homes. For a year's worth of stupid chuckles . . . thanks, punks.

"International" by Jim's Big Ego.mp3

I met Jim Infantino in 1987, the summer before my senior year in high school. He was my RA during the month-long July Program at Bennington College. (Which, as an aside, had a 6:1 girls:guys ratio. The salad days, as they say.) Anyway, Jim was just a cool guy with a guitar back then, a student at Haverford College (which Rob didn't believe was a real school as of two weeks ago) spending a summer in Vermont. Nowadays Jim fronts Jim's Big Ego, an NPR-friendly, somewhat under-the-radar coffeehouse band that's infinitely cooler than the crap description I just gave it. JBE is a trio you should definitely go see live if you're anywhere near Boston (or Vienna, VA on January 22), and one the rest of you can and should hear online. Their most famous song is "Stress," and other standouts include "She's Dead," "Punk Junkies from New York," "Desperate Times," and new tunes "Sleepwalker" and "Background Vocals." For the left-wingers, "Cautionary Tale" and "WTFMFWTFAYT" should amuse. But my point in promoting Jim -- who I've only seen play and spoken to once since 1987 -- and his band as an appreciation this year is to say that I'm pretty psyched when friends or acquaintances of mine seem to have carved out a life that makes them happy. Success can be a mis-quantified thing, and without knowing enough to say for sure I'd wager that Jim and his Big Ego are doing quite well these days, even with a day job to support a music life. Pretty cool, and here's hoping that more among you reach plateaus of pleasantness in the near future.

"Sentimental Heart" by She & Him.mp3

"For Emma" by Bon Iver.mp3

I think 2009 is going to be the dawn of a new era of sentimentality in America. Okay, probably not that melodramatic, but it may mark the end of the sheer cold cynicism that has personified the nation for a decade or more. To wit, our chums over at the Wheelhouse (also referred to as "She & Him") are already exhibiting a softer side. Word on the street is that Jerry's considering making GF stand for more than "Goals For." Meanwhile, Geoff, even as he was beginning to publicly dread the Ides of April, was downright not-awful in his remarks about the president-elect. In addition, I think positivity is replacing negativity as the "what's in" buzz-vibe. Rob's been leading that charge since he unveiled the Era of Positivity at MLC in 2003. Five or six years seems about the appropriate catch-up window for the world in matters like this. "Bon Iver" means "good winter" in (misspelled) French. This winter's gonna be a tough one for a lot of people. I vow here and now to at least try to keep up the optimism and appreciation all season long, even when it becomes less than picnic-like for me.

"Ghost Under Rocks" by Ra Ra Riot.mp3

"The '59 Sound" by The Gaslight Anthem.mp3

"Sway" by The Kooks.mp3

"Grounds for Divorce" by Elbow.mp3
"You, Me and the Bourgeoisie" by The Submarines.mp3

"Fools" by The Dodos.mp3

Here's to Gheorghe: The Blog and all who visit to make it worth keeping up. Somehow in the last five years we've managed to log over 1,000 posts and many more comments about . . . not much. Life and how to live it, replete with YouTube clips, I guess. These six songs each represent one Gheorghe blogger. See if you can figure out who's who. (No, not really. This is just catch-all so I can squeeze in six other great songs from '08 and round out a 20-spot. Enjoy.)



Happy New Year, and may 2009 be the Gheorghiest year we've known to date.

Cheers.

My Embarrassing Learning-to-Drive Story

From time to time I break various Gheorghian's balls about their kids' driving.  I might shoot Juan Carlos a text when I see his daughter's car beached on the curb in front of his house, or when she almost causes an accident a block from home.  I might shoot rob a text questioning the plausibility of his daughter's story that she hit one pothole with both front tires.  They both, along with others, come to me when their kids ask for some specific car and I usually give advice that the kids don't like.  All this is to say that many of your children hate me.

I will make minor amends with this post.

I learned to drive in two of the worst possible contraptions for student drivers.  One car was a 1986 Nissan Sentra that had zero options other than a rear defroster.  No radio, no AC, nothing.  Vinyl seats, roll-down windows.  No power assist for the brakes or the steering.  Five on the floor.  You might ask why we had this thing, and the reason is a mix of stupidity and poverty.  My mother refuses still to this day to buy used cars (her rationale being "Why would you want to buy someone else's problem?" because she assumes everyone buys cars and drives them until the wheels fall off and only trades them in if they're a lemon and also refuses to listen to my explanation of the economics of off-lease cars).  She also refuses to buy into the concept of leverage (she was appalled when I financed zwoman's VW for 60 months at 0% interest no matter how much I explained that 0% interest means I pay no interest and instead put those dollars to work in my savings and brokerage accounts for five years).  Taken together with her and my stepfather's general lack of professional success, the only new car they could afford without taking a loan was a stripped down Sentra.  It looked like this but in white.

Because there was no power assist on the steering, you really had to saw away at the wheel to maneuvre the little shitbox around a corner.  Parallel parking was hazing--not only did I have to deal with the heavy steering, I had to feather the clutch to creep backwards into the spot without stalling.  My mom would take me to a parking lot and set up two garbage cans to practice parking around (parallel parking is part of the driving test in NJ).  This meant that we had to wrestle two garbage cans into the back seat (the trunk was too small and she was too stupid to use a bungee cord to hold it closed) and drive around with the front seats all the way forward until we got to the empty parking lot.  Then she would yell at me if I hit a garbage can while practicing because I would dent the can ("My garbage can!!"), so then I had to practice metallurgy and push the dent back out.

The brakes were a study in non-linear response.  The stopping power varied depending on how deeply you pressed on them so it was hard to stop smoothly.  My mother, of course, berated my herky-jerky stops and warned me that this would damage the car (TR and Juan Carlos recognize my mother's irrationality and are slowly nodding along as they read this).  So I learned to dip in hard to make it stop, and then feather my way off them to avoid making the car bob back and forth.  Just like the end of this Nissan ad, only not as cool.

The other car was also a shitbox, but completely different in character.  My father had a 1987 Nissan Van.  That's all they called it.  Van.  It was one of those blocky Japanese minivans everyone adored in the 80s.  It was silver but this is enough to give you the gist of the thing.

It had AC and an automatic transmission and power windows, locks, steering and brakes.  But it was a terrible contraption to learn in.  The driver sits directly on top of the front wheel, so you have to take turns like you're driving a school bus, not a car.  In any normal car you turn the steering wheel before your body actually gets to the turn, because the wheels are out in front of you.  But in this monstrosity you have to drive out to where you want to turn, then crank the wheel.  At least it had power steering.  I had no idea where it ended so we never tried parallel parking.

The power brakes could not have been more different from my mother's car.  If you dipped in hard (like I had to do on my mother's Sentra) the car would stop short, causing my father to spill his omnipresent caffeine-free diet Pepsi and then berate me.  His driveway was gravel, and if you've ever lived with a gravel driveway you know that stopping a car in gravel creates a little pile of gravel in front of the wheels, acting as a chock to help stop the car much more quickly than it normally does on pavement.  So if you have to routinely stop a 1987 Nissan Van in a downward sloping gravel driveway while my father drinks caffeine-free diet Pepsi, you learn how to feather the brakes veeeery carefully.  

Another charming feature of the 1987 Nissan Van is that the brake pedal is stupidly close to the steering column.  This will be important later.  Here's a bad photo but you can kind of see the proximity.

So I'm 16 years old and I have my learner's permit (you have to be 17 to get a license in NJ).  I've been practicing with my parents regularly, learning to drive two completely different vehicles as best I can.  I only see my father on Saturdays so the Van is less familiar to me than the Sentra but I'm very familiar with my father's temper and general disdain for all things relating to me so I try hard to remember how to operate the Van.

It's a clear sunny day and we're out for a drive in the Van in Tappan, NY.  At some point I failed to turn where my father wanted me to go but he's cool about it.  He points to a driveway and tells me to make a 3-point turn there, then head back to where he wanted to go.

Now, I'm being charitable when I call this thing a driveway.  Tappan is an ancient place with narrow roads, narrow houses, and narrow driveways.  It really was a paved path that some farmer put there 200 years ago so he could lead his goats from the barn to the street.  It was 6.9 feet across at best.  The mouth of the goat path was shrouded on one side by bushy weeds.  I immediately recognized the high degree of difficulty with his ask.

We're going about 25 MPH so I need so slow down but I'm also worried I'm going to spill his Pepsi.  I'm also worried about putting the Van in such a narrow slot of tarmac.  I lift off the gas and move my foot over to the brake, but I bang into the steering column.  At the same time my father yells "Jesus Christ, turn in here I said!"

So I turn.  But it's too soon because it's the Van, not the Sentra, and we weren't on top of the turn yet.  We bounce over the curb and through the shroud of bushy weeds into the goat path.  My foot is still firmly against the steering column and there is Pepsi all over the place.  My father is yelling "Fuuuuuuuck!"  I slide my foot down the steering column onto the brake but I don't slam it down because this isn't the Sentra and if I slam it down I'll put the old man through the windshield.  The goat path is not gravel though, so there is no little gravel pile to form a chock to help stop the Van.  Instead, I rely on the house adjacent to the goat path to stop the Van.  I hit the house.

"You hit a house!" bellows my father.  Over and over.  Sometimes he peppers that exclamation with "fucking" or "goddam."  I realize there's no way he will agree but I sheepishly ask "Can we keep this between us?" and he retorts "Are you fucking kidding me?!?  Back out of here before the guy whose house you hit comes out and gets our license plate number!"

So I put it in reverse and tear out of the goat path, through the shroud of bushy weeds and back onto the narrow street.  I did not hit anything and I got the car pointed back from whence we came.  I mention this to my father ("I made the 3-point turn at least") but he is not impressed.  We turn down another street and survey the damage.  There's a scuff on the front bumper but no major damage.

As soon as we get back to his house he regales his wife with this story, and she puts it in her memory bank of reasons why he abhors her stepson.  My father lives to humiliate me, and he feasts on this story for years.  As far as I know he's still telling it to people.

So if I'm the reason why you don't have a Jeep Grand Cherokee, or a vintage VW Golf, or your father suspects that you plowed over a median trying to make an illegal left turn at excessive speed as opposed to hitting a pothole, think back on this story of the time I hit a house in a Nissan Van and laugh at me as my father has done for decades.

My Thoughts on Electric Cars

OBX Dave recently asked for my thoughts on electric cars.  Here they are.

I have ridden in a Tesla twice, both times driven by the same driver and she didn't know how to drive an EV.  When you lift off the throttle the car starts the regenerative braking process, which throws you forward and slows the car down.  This prompts the driver to step on the throttle again, which whips you back in your seat.  The net result is carsickness.  The other backseat passenger threw up once we got to our destination.  The seats are uncomfortable and the build quality is terrible.  Obviously this doesn't apply to all EVs.

If everyone switched to EVs today we would destroy the grid.  I'm also not convinced that it would be a panacea, given that 61% of the US's electricity comes from fossil fuels.  Here in NJ, about 48% comes from natural gas and 42% from nuclear reactors.  The rest is renewable.  You can find out more about your state here.  While some states might make clean electricity others don't, so ramping up electricity production could cause pockets of increased pollution.  We need to make more clean electricity before we replace all our internal combustion engines ("ICE").

I think Americans have been hoodwinked into believing they need big cars.  If you have three or more kids you should get a minivan.  They are much more efficient in terms of gas consumption and cargo room than almost any SUV.  If you need to tow something then a traditional body-on-frame SUV makes sense.

I also think Americans have been hoodwinked into believing they need four-wheel-drive.  If you live in DC or further south you probably don't encounter enough snow to need all-wheel-drive.  If you're into camping it makes sense, but if you're just going to Harris Teeter and soccer practice you don't need it.  It just adds weight which requires more power, and thus more gas, to push it up a hill.

I also think that we have made insane leaps in engine technology.  For example, the cheapest car in America is the Chevrolet Spark with a starting MSRP of $13,600.  It has a 1.4 liter engine that makes 98 horsepower, or 70 hp/liter.  For comparison, a 1992 Porsche 911 makes 247 hp with 3.6 liters, or 69 hp/liter.

Even better: a Honda Civic EX starts at $25,500 and pulls 180 hp out of 1.5 liters, or 120 hp/liter.  And it gets 33/42 MPG city/highway.  A 2012 Porsche 911 makes 345 hp with 3.6 liters, or 96 hp/liter.  A 1980 Corvette also makes 180 hp but needs 5.0 liters to do it.

Imagine if we used these advances to maximize fuel economy instead of horsepower.  But it's hard to do that because everyone wants to drive a 4,000+ pound SUV.  More power is necessary.

It is no secret that I am an unabashed VWAG fan.  For my money, the best all-around new car is the VW GTI.  It seats four adults comfortably, has 20 cubic feet of cargo space, gets 32 MPG on the highway, sprints to 60 MPH in 5.1 seconds, handles beautifully, and sends power to the front wheels so it doesn't get stuck in the snow.  They're under $35k new and you can even get them with a stick.  There are very few circumstances where you need something else, at least in my daily life.

If you're looking for the perfect combination of utility and environmentalism available at this moment in time, I would consider a plug-in hybrid ("PHEV").  These cars are gas/electric hybrids but they can run on electricity alone.  They typically have a range of 20-40 miles on just the battery, which is all you really need for your daily chores around town.  If you are dead-set on a giant SUV, check out the Volvo XC90 Recharge.  It drives like your typical seven-passenger land yacht, but if all you do is run the kids to and from school and soccer practice, maybe do some errands in between, you can get it all done without burning a drop of gas.  Plug it in at the end of the day and you're ready to do it again tomorrow.  Then, when you want to drive to Maine, it runs as a hybrid for 58 MPGe.  Yes, it's stupidly expensive, but not more so than any other big luxury SUV.  Volvo's XC60 Recharge is smaller and cheaper and does roughly the same thing albeit with five seats.  If you don't need to be swathed in Scandinavian luxury, Toyota's RAV4 Prime has more electric range, better hybrid fuel economy, and is a lot cheaper.  Predictably, Subaru's Crosstrek Hybrid is probably the best deal out there but with limited cargo space.  The Jeep Wrangler PHEV is proof that nature fills a void.  I have no idea why anyone would drop $55k on a Wrangler but it's out there if you want it and the website says it's the "BEST SELLING PHEV IN AMERICA" so what do I know.

I am sure that someday I will own an EV because that's the way the world is going.  I hope that by the time I have to buy one the average EV will be cheaper, driving range will be longer, charge times will be faster, and there will be more charging stations available.  I also want real buttons for the HVAC instead of a giant iPad.  I don't know how easy it will be to dispose of or recycle the batteries.  I don't know how environmentally friendly or socially equitable it is to make the batteries or mine the minerals required to make them.  I suspect it's all a zero-sum game--making energy requires us to break some molecular bonds and that creates nasty byproducts in one way or another.

If only we had an energy expert on staff to tell me why I'm wrong!

A Close Reading of My Netflix Queue

I love Netflix. I love the control it gives me over my movie and television viewing, I love that I never watch commercials, and I love that the U.S. Postal system doles out Netflix at a tolerable rate. That is why I don't have cable-- not because cable sucks-- but because cable is too good; I can't handle the all the excellent programming. Netflix puts a much needed governor on my viewing.

I also love the Netflix queue. When you add a movie to your Netflix queue, there is absolutely no commitment involved. This is unlike when you buy a book, and feel an obligation to read it because you have spent money on it and it is taking up room on your bookshelf (and you also feel guilt for the tree that died to make the book).  The Netflix queue isn't analogous to taking books out of the library either, because you still need to physically store those books while you're not reading them, and you have to physically return them so you don't accrue late fees. Even pirating music engenders more responsibility than queuing a movie on Netflix, because you still feel you should give the music a listen as it is taking up space on your hard drive.

Because my Netflix queue carries none of this responsibility . . . because it is an abstraction that takes up no physical or digital space in my life, it has swollen to 223 movies. This is more movies than I could watch in five years . . . if I were planning on watching them. But I'm not. I'm never going to watch 95% percent of them. But I can't remove them either. They have sentimental value. So they sit in the queue, serving no purpose other than-- under close examination-- as a revealing tour of my consciousness, moods, personality, and aspirations. Let's get to it.

Queue Numbers 184-189: Shakespeare's An Age of Kings (Discs 1-5)

The Netflix blurb: "Explore the history of the English monarchy through the prism of Shakespeare's plays with this 15-part BBC series that features many of England's top actors. Originally broadcast on television in 1960."

Analysis: Why is this on my queue? Ostensibly, because I teach a high school Shakespeare class, I teach several of the history plays, and-- short of taking a college course-- this would be an excellent way to further my knowledge of the bard. But I teach a high school Shakespeare class . . . so all I need to know is a bit more than your average high school nerd knows about Shakespeare; this is way more information than I need to effectively teach the course, yet in some deluded moment I thought I might educate myself above and beyond the pale. And I refuse to remove this from my queue. I entertain the notion that someday I will become an expert.

Assessment: I am fooling myself.

Queue Number 219: Pierrot Le Fou

The Netflix Blurb: "Director Jean-Luc Godard's popular 1965 drama captures '60s French cool as only Godard could depict it."

Analysis: When I first joined Netflix, I thought I might become a film buff. I had always wanted to be an aficionado of some sort, and movies seemed to be a relatively painless thing to become buff at. I have never taken a film class, so I decided I would watch all the classics: Fellini, Godard, Kurosawa, etc. Instead, last week I watched Hamlet 2.

Question: Is this film the predecessor to The Blue Man Group?

Answer: I have no idea. Ask a film buff.

Assessment: The only time I will be a buff is when I am in the buff. Even then, I'm so hairy that it is hard to tell that I am naked.

Number 11: City Island

The Netflix Blurb: "When he recognizes his son, Tony (Steven Strait), whom he hasn't seen in more than 20 years, among a crop of new inmates in the jail where he works, Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) decides to bring the troubled young man home with him, much to the surprise of his wife and kids."

Analysis: My friend Terry made me put this on my queue, and I often check my queue when I'm in the English office at the same time as Terry, so I need to keep it near the top to assure him that I'm going to watch it . . . but I never feel like watching it, so any time it gets near the top, I push it down to number 11 again. At this point, Terry must realize that I'm never going to watch it (at least not while The Walking Dead, Madmen, and Black Swan are available options).

Assessment: I'm so polite that I am rude.

Queue Number 23: Zombieland

Assessment: Jesse Eisenberg went to the high school where I teach, and so I feel obligated to have the movie on my queue (but not to actually watch it).

 Queue Number 25: The Road

I loved the novel by Cormac McCarthy and-- in an abstract way-- I am curious as to how John Hillcoat translated this apocalyptic story into film, but when it comes to actually choosing a particular evening to watch this film, it never happens. Why? Because there's never a specific night when I say to myself: I really need to see someone roast and eat a human fetus.

Queue Number 13: The Black Cauldron

Netflix blurb: Disney's first PG-rated animated film is a swords-and-sorcery epic set in an ancient land, where young pig keeper Taran dreams of becoming a warrior, and the evil Horned King (voiced by John Hurt) is trying to obtain the Black Cauldron to raise an army of the dead.

I loved this series of books as a child, and want to introduce the characters to my own children, but not more than I want to get the next Walking Dead disk or more than I want to overcome the "long wait" for disk one of Season Four of Madmen.

Assessment: My kids are already spoiled enough, and they don't know what they're missing.

 Queue Number 167: Not Quite Hollywood

Netflix Blurb: "Explore the unofficial history of Australian cult film with this provocative documentary on the "Ozploitation" flicks of the 1970s and '80s. Filmmaker Mark Hartley explores the violence, sex and nudity rampant during this period of lax restrictions."

This movie sounds like it might have lots of nudity, but I've yet to watch it.

Assessment: If I want to see naked girls, I don't need to get a movie from Netflix. I have an internet connection.

Netflix Queue Number 198: A Very Long Engagement

Netflix Blurb:  Amelie's Audrey Tautou stars as Mathilde, a young Frenchwoman who vows to find out what happened to her missing fiancé (Gaspard Ulliel) during World War I. He appears to have died after a court-martial, but she needs to know for sure. As she looks for the truth, she discovers unexpected things about herself and the people she meets along the way. 133 Minutes.

My wife put this on the queue. 133 minutes?  About a missing fiancee? If I stay vigilant, this will never make it into top one hundred, let alone the top ten.

Assessment: My wife may control our household's budget, but I'm the man of the house when it comes to the queue.

Queue Number 197: Little Otik

Netflix Blurb: In this bizarre fantasy from the Czech Republic, an ordinary couple, Karel and Bozena, are unable to conceive a child. When Karel digs up a tree root and whittles something vaguely resembling a human baby, Bozena's strong maternal longings transform the stump into a living creature ... with a monstrous appetite that can't be met by baby's formula!

My friend Eric "recommended" this movie. Actually, he said it wasn't great but the description is so absurd that I have kept it on my queue for shits and giggles.  If I had a daughter, I would name her Bozena.


I invite you all to take a closer look at your own Netflix queue, and report what you find there. I am guessing that it is a mirror into your soul. Perhaps I am wrong . . . perhaps the rest of you keep a neater, more spartan queue; a practical queue, a queue of only things that are intended to be watched, but-- when the cost of adding a film to the queue is nothing-- I strongly doubt it.

The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day Four

On the fourth day of Gheorghemas, the swarthy Romanian gave to me:

Four reasons to save 68 CDs
Three balls a-rainin'
Two more automotive wormhole websites
And a bald guy and some random hor-seys

You all have heard me cyber-whining about our ongoing/neverending renovation. We are approaching the ninth inning of the project. And while I wonder if it's a fifteen inning game, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. A point of influence to my wife amid this project was the need to purge objects as we prepare to settle into a wildly different home. I am an anti-pack rat, but my wife likes to hang onto things. We hit a purge groove last w/e. When we were both under the influence of wine, I got her to part with some stuff. I strongly urge you all to use wine as a lubricant to get the wife to purge items with little emotional value. And to get her in the mood for sexy time.

I decided to lead by example (again) last w/e. I made the hard decision to get rid of my CDs. They are stored in many (very) heavy boxes. I have moved them many times since burning them to a hard drive about a dozen years ago. It is inconceivable to think I will ever need ALL of them ever again. Removing boxes creates space. Everybody wins, right?

So I pulled all the boxes down from the attic and stuffed them in the garage until we figured out how to recycle them. But then I got nostalgic and decided to rip through them one last time, for old time's sake. Memories flooded back. I saw CDs I special-ordered from The Band Box. I saw CDs I had bought on cassette and vinyl. I saw CDs that expanded my mind in high school. I saw CDs that blew my mind in college. And I saw shit sandwiches. TONS of them. So much wasted money!

I decided I should hold onto a select, manageable group of the CDs I own. I gave myself no limit on saving. I just went through every one and kept each one that checked some opaque box in my brain/heart, keeping the hurdle rate pretty high. I looked at the keepers pile as I was almost finished sorting and became excited in an immature way, given where I thought the total might land. So where did I end up? 68 CDs. 68. Sorry dudes. I would love to have serendipitously landed at 69, but a CD had to meet some emotional threshold to be kept. No Korn. No MC Serch solo album. No POD. No Pietasters. No Rave 'Til Dawn. And no Dee Lite. Little Feat didn't make the cut either. Is it fun as hell? Yes. Yes it is. But is it an emotional anchor? No. But they did play at Jazzfest during my bachelor party. The reasons are entirely personal. Some I could explain and some I couldn't.

So here are the four reasons why I saved 68 CDs:

1) My kids may want the social equity from a robust collection of "old school" music, much like I gained with my hippie-ish mother's classic rock vinyl collection. So they now have a stack to choose from.

2) If I die one day (which some folks say is possible), my kids can play some of these and hear a lot of the music that influenced me as a kid and young adult. This was a key (and largely irrational) reason behind my decision to stash some tunes. My kids already like some Beatles, Rolling Stones, White Strips and Widespread Panic that I play them. So those are layup keepers. McCoy Tyner, Velvet Underground and Terrapin Station may take a bit longer to resonate, but they're still building blocks, at least in my warped view.

3) It hurts too much to be so clinical and toss all of it away. This is the soundtrack to my days as a young buck, when I was bird-dogging chicks and banging beaver, after all!

4) Adding an element of emotion to the process of decluttering makes my wife think I'm a normal human being and lets her know I'll give a bit of an emotional cushion when it comes to chucking crap into the garbage. Happy wife, happy life.

Here are the 68 CDs I saved. They skew towards rock for obvious reasons. Metal made it in the mix a bit  (Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Iron Maiden). Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet is my lone hip hop album. The collection might have been bigger had I not lost so many CDs along the hazy days of my youth. I'd bet a couple of you out there have a scratched-up CD w/ "TAR" scribbled on it.

Artist	Album/Box Set
Allman Brothers Band	Live at the Fillmore
Beatles	Rubber Soul
Bob Dylan	Blonde on Blonde
Bob Dylan	Blood on the Tracks
Bob Dylan	Bootleg Series Volume 1
Bob Marley	Songs of Freedom (Box Set)
Broken Social Scene	You Forgot it in People
Bruce Springsteen	The River
Bruce Springsteen	The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle
Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds	Live at Luther College
Dave Matthews Band	Crash
Elton John	Greatest Hits
Elton John	Greatest Hits Vol II
Grateful Dead	Reckoning
Grateful Dead	Shakedown Street
Grateful Dead	Terrapin Station
Guns n' Roses	Appetite for Destruction
Iron Maiden	Live After Death
Jane's Addiction	Nothing Shocking
Led Zeppelin	Led Zeppelin I
McCoy Tyner	Blue Bossa
Metallica	Kill 'Em All
Metallica	Master of Puppets
Michael Jackson	Off the Wall
Michael Jackson	Thriller
Mooney Suzuki	Electric Sweat
Motley Crue	Shout at the Devil
My Morning Jacket	It Still Moves
Neil Young	Decade
Neil Young	Harvest
North Mississippi All Stars	Shake Hands With Shorty
Old & In the Way	Old & In the Way
Pearl Jam	Ten
Phish	Live 10/31/98
Phish	Rift
Public Enemy	Fear of a Black Planet
Rage Against the Machine	Rage Against the Machine
Rage Against the Machine	Renegades
Robert Randolph & The Family Band	Live at the Wetlands
Robert Randolph & The Family Band	Unclassified
Rolling Stones	Let it Bleed
Rolling Stones	Sticky Fingers
Rusted Root	When I Woke
Sly & The Family Stone	Greatest Hits
Soundgarden	BadMotorfinger
Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble	Greatest Hits
Strunz & Farah	Live
Styx	Grand Illusion
Talking Heads	Stop Making Sense
The Band	Music from Big Pink
The Band	The Night They Drove Old Dixe Down
The Doors	LA Woman
The Doors	Morrison Hotel
The Doors	The Doors
The Samples	No Room
The Strokes	Is This It?
The Word	The Word
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers	Greatest Hits
Van Morrison	Moondance
Velvet Underground	Peel Slowly and See (Box Set)
White Stripes	De Stijl
White Stripes	Elephant
White Stripes	White Blood Cells
White Stripes	White Stripes
Widespread Panic	Ain't Life Grand
Widespread Panic	Don't Tell the Band
Widespread Panic	Everyday
Widespread Panic	Space Wrangler